Wine discovery doesn’t get any better than dining at a Joe Campanale restaurant. From his 2007 debut dell’anima in the West Village to his current Brooklyn hot spots, Campanale has always ensured that his wine lists skew heavily Italian and that he or someone on his staff will help you choose an exquisite pairing to go with your meal.
These days, Campanale directs guests at Fausto—“A Brooklyn restaurant with an Italian soul”—to try Chiara Condello 100 percent Sangiovese from Predappio in Romagna with pasta such as lumache with veal Bolognese or campenelle with house-made pork sausage and Swiss chard. At the more intimate wine bar LaLou, he counsels diners to pair the red with a burger or roast chicken.
Fausto's campenelle with house-made sausage and Swiss chard, from chef Erin Shambura.
“It’s more about elegance than power,” he says of the eponymous Chiara Condello wines. “They’re more nuanced. They’re energetic and pretty and they don’t clobber you.”
Campanale came across the young winemaker, who is in her late 20s, while researching his forthcoming book on Italian wines made from indigenous grapes, due out in 2022.
“I love indigenous grapes. I work exclusively with indigenous grapes at the restaurants. You don’t see a lot of Sangiovese di Romagna, especially of high quality, coming into the states,” Campanale says.
“What she’s doing is exciting: organically grown, spontaneously fermented, long-maceration Sangiovese,” he adds.
Condello may be young but she’s no upstart. She first learned about wine as a young girl from her maternal grandfather, who made Sangiovese from his vineyard in Predappio, as she explains in this 2020 interview with Vinous. After going to university in Milan to study economics, she returned to her home region and worked with her father on their family estate, producing Condé wines.
In 2015, she set out to make her own wines under the Chiarra Condello label, working exclusively with the grape best known for its use in Tuscan wines or Le Marche.
Campanale explains that Cordello represents a very au courant type of Italian winemaker, focused on native varietals rather than trying to add more familiar grapes to make crowd-pleasing wines.
“They can express the true history or nature of their place through using indigenous grapes,” he says.
At a time when most people can’t travel to Emilia-Romagna to visit the place in person, Cordello offers a true bargain for this sensory voyage. Her entry-level Sangiovese is readily available in the U.S. and retails for just under $20. Now that's a good deal.