Landers Superstore held a series of wine festivals last month to highlight its offerings for the Christmas season, starting at its Alabang West branch. After all, when in a rush to buy gifts for friends and family, you can’t go wrong with a bottle of quality wine. Or when you’re attending a holiday feast or office party, it’s polite to bring something and the host always appreciates wine.
Landers features notable brands of red wine such as Salento Rosso Marmolle, Stella Rosa Rosso, and Amahle Shiraz; for white wine, there’s Salento Bianco Marmorele, Stella Rosa Peach, and Amahle Chenin Blanc. The wines are complemented by the store’s wide selection of cheeses and delis to make for a wonderful grazing table when hosting a party.
One of the highlights of the wine festival was Tenute Rubino — a label out of Brindisi, Puglia, in southern Italy — which is available in the Philippines exclusively at Landers.
Wine expert and Sardinia native Francesco De Mauri of Tenute Rubino says, “The most important thing to ask is why are you buying wine? If it’s to get drunk, get beer or whisky. Wine is something that comes from my land and it’s meant to be shared with family and friends.”
Francesco makes a passionate case for Italian wines, especially for local varieties. “Fifty years ago it was common to see an Italian company producing cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay, but what we understood from that experience was that we were losing our identity. We have to come back to our local varieties, otherwise all the wines all over the world will be the same — you can make a lot of money but you will lose your history. Italy has 430 indigenous varieties, more than three times what France has. So now the new movement, which started 20 years ago, has seen the growth of indigenous and rare varieties. We have to be local to be global — to sell it all over the world so that people can try what we have.”
Landers offers an extensive collection of wines from around the world.
A Christmas set from Tenute Rubino is packaged exclusively for Landers, consisting of three 375-ml. (half a bottle) of white, red and rosato. “We will never call it rosé,” says Francesco of the third bottle. “I don’t want to use French to describe my Italian wine.”
The gift box is a great introduction to the Tenute Rubino label. Francesco says it’s their “base line” and next year they will introduce more bottles, going up to the top ones. “If you like the base, you will totally fall in love with the top. Sometimes, people let you try only the top, which is expensive so it should be good, and then you taste their less expensive wines and you get very disappointed.”
The red wine is dry and has a nice mild taste. “It’s a medium body fermented in oak for eight months and stays in the bottle for three more. It’s not a complicated wine.”
The white wine is very aromatic and Francesco says it’s made in front of the sea so you can taste hints of the minerals and saltiness. “The rosato is dry and has a deeper taste, coming from old vines. Puglia is very famous for rosato. The wine goes well with everything, from appetizer to main courses.”
Based in Japan, Francesco has been to the Philippines a few times and tried the local cuisine. “I love my wine with Filipino food because it has some spiciness and saltiness inside. The first time I came to the Philippines, I felt I was in the Mediterranean, maybe because of the Spanish influence here. I sometimes forget I’m in Asia; I feel and taste the Latino spirit.”
Born and raised in Sardinia, he says he had his first taste of wine at six years old. “My uncle was making wine for our house. They used to give us wine and add water to it, saying it was good for your health. One summer in my uncle’s house, I opened the fridge and there was a bottle of red wine, which was a bit sweet, and because it was October and it was still hot in Sardinia, I started drinking and drinking. I didn’t feel the alcohol. I came back to the living room and began talking to a woman whom I thought was my aunt but she was actually a stranger. I thought, this is how it feels being drunk. I went to sleep and woke up the next day.”
Francesco continues, “Forty years ago, the owners of Tenute Rubino were just farmers who wanted to make good wine. Founder Tommaso Rubino was producing artichokes, tomatoes and other vegetables, but they were also growing grapes. In the past, Italy — especially southern Italy — produced a lot of grapes that were shipped to France or northern Italy. We were not producing our own wines. When the second generation came, the price of grapes kept going down because of production from Spain. The farm couldn’t make money but it had very good grapes, so they decided to produce their own wine.”
Today Tenute Rubino has a winery in Brindisi and four estates: Jaddico, Marmorelle, Uggio and Punta Aquila “stretching from the Adriatic coast to the hinterland of Brindisi in Salento, Puglia.”
In the vineyards, most of the workers are women and their work is celebrated every year in September in the Jaddico estate.
“Puglia has a long history of winemaking; it’s been producing wine for 4,000 years,” Francesco says. “Chardonnay is not from Italy but we are growing it. One of our customers is a famous chateau in France, so when they have a bad vintage in France they’d go to Italy to buy chardonnay because it’s much easier for us to grow it, especially in Puglia, which has the longest sun exposure in a year. We have more than 250 days of sun, very good not just for making wine but for agriculture.
(Left) Landers Superstore marketing services executive Pinky Abano and marketing director Pinky Angodung. (Right) Landers Superstore chief financial officer Francis Reyes, and wine and liquor buyer Diana Yu.
“In two years our winery will be moved from the town to the middle of our vineyards, so when people visit they will feel the ground. We are also building a small hotel with 15 rooms and a spa. We want the people to come and see and taste our wines.”
So we had one last important question for him: who’s more handsome, the French or the Italian winemakers?
He laughs and says, “If you want to have a nice date, go around and have nice food and wine, maybe you should choose the French; if you want to enjoy after the date, it’s better to go with the Italian.”
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Visit Landers Superstore at Landers Alabang West at Daang Hari Road, Almanza Dos, Las Piñas City; Landers ArcoVia City at Eulogio Rodriguez Jr. Ave, Pasig; Landers Balintawak at 1240 EDSA Balintawak, QC; Landers Otis at 1890 Paz Guazon St., Paco, Manila; Landers Cebu at 23 Minore Park, Cardinal Rosales Ave., Cebu. For more information about Landers Superstore’s exclusive offerings, visit http://landers.ph/.
Visit the author’s travel blog at www.findingmyway.net. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @iamtanyalara.