March 2026 newsletter: vineyard and Prima Materia Winery news with a bit of Italian
- Pietro Buttitta
- Mar 4
- 9 min read
Updated: Mar 12
 Hello again friends and salve. This is my monthly newsletter from deep inside the world of wine and Prima Materia Winery, March 2026 edition. This year feels like a potentially transformative one for the wine business, and I want to share a few discoveries and inspirational moments, even in the midst of constant change and weighty world events. |
Prima Materia Winery UpdateIn 2025 I made the difficult decision to close our Oakland tasting room, and to downsize our production for the immediate future while the wine industry works its way out a multi-headed mess. In fact, my California distributor just called me yesterday to say that 14-month-old invoices won’t be paid any time soon. On the positive side, since my day-job has been making mainstream-ish California wine for the last two years, I have really fallen back in love with Italian grapes, and I have been working in the vineyard in the hopes of ramping production back up soon. Prima Materia is still working through our best Nebbiolo ever and great Aglianico, super juicy 2022 Barbera and Negro Amaro, and we are rolling into 2021 Sangiovese with a new Sagrantino coming. The medium-sized news is that several Prima Materia wines are available by the bottle (and two for tasting) at our new Local Vines shared tasting room space in Lafayette. Sadly our whites, rosé and Grenache are all gone. Like most other wineries at the moment, the discounts are no joke: a mixed case is $275 with free shipping, and delivery is free within 10 miles of Oakland. Wine club members please contact me before ordering on the website!
The Year (so far) in Vineyard & Winery Consulting From Aglianico to Cali Cab (and back to Aglianico)With the Local Vines consulting project running smoothly, and spring bottling (plus pet-nat disgorgement) set for April, my winter focus always turns back to the vineyard. Pruning, vine rehabilitation, and setting the scene for spring bud break are always the focus after the new year. In our own vineyard many of the vines are over 20 years of age, and it is time to reassess vascular systems, pruning wounds, retrain grapevine arms, and scout for the inevitable maladies that can compromise vines as they age. Some cultivars, such as Aglianico, Refosco and Barbera are quite sensitive to pruning wounds (which we call trunk diseases today) and careful choices and reconstructive work is necessary. Others like Sangiovese and Dolcetto (add Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc and Grenache for my Francophilic friends) are quite resistant and hardy naturally, making for quick and easy work with their inherent recuperative power. But with age comes responsibility, and if you want you want the good stuff, you need deep roots, active soil microbes, and balanced canopies after youthful exuberance has faded. While production wineries will often replant their vines at 20-25 years of age, we think that this is just the beginning of when vines start producing the best fruit. If you want to read up on pruning and vine disease research then start here. In the photo above I am deep in a Nebbiolo trance. While each grape has particular needs, Nebbiolo is a unique pruning puzzle unto itself that is unlike any other vine, so crank up the music, praticare l’italiano, and get busy. Two other vineyard projects are in the works, one of which has changed from a rehabilitation project (I really wanted to save those 20-year old roots) to a full vineyard replant. Sometimes an abandoned vineyard just can’t be brought back to life after the voles, water stress and eutypa have compromised it. It is always painful to rip out vines, but we hope to give their successors a better life. On the plus side, we are now discussing building a small winery. To be continued… If you know of someone looking for vineyard or wine industry help: Buttitta Wine Consulting Website Wine Tastings of Note: Pecorino d’Abruzzo and more I’m a big believer in keeping the palate in shape, and the more you taste, the more you learn and refine. Several recent tastings hit that sweet spot between discovery, interest and fantastic execution. There are so many underrepresented or forgotten areas in the vast world of wine, and sometimes revisiting the old is just as interesting and satisfying as the newest shiny thing. Here are a few tastings and thoughts that I found notable.
Wine Writing While my own writing was admittedly sparse last month while focusing on vineyard projects and industry events, I received a huge gift in a fellowship that included spending four days at the Wine Writers’ Symposium. Many of my own wine-writing heroes like Elaine Chukan Brown, Dorothy Gaiter, Alex Maltman and Alder Yarrow acted as gracious mentors and shared their thoughts and experiences with remarkable openness. I am a true novice in such elevated company, and spending time discussing the nuts-and-bolts of writing, pitching, and proper research felt like a new door opening. As a former philosophy student I also appreciated the dive into important meta-topics like significance being a choice, and thoughts on overlapping forces such as labor, value and prestige versus luxury. In tumultuous times wine can seem insignificant, but it can also be an axis point or entry into deeper discussion. My current thought is that it isn’t wine’s job to hold all of the pieces together for us, but rather to act as a prism and mirror, exposing where we need to do more work and reflect on ourselves, while also being delicious. For those who are curious there are quite a few videos available of the sessions at the above link. 
Wine Industry Roundup (not the Monsanto kind)
My friends are getting tired of me talking about Lambrusco all the time, but I am going to make the ask: Is anyone up for being part of a “California Lambrusco” project? Let’s create a three-sku line of lower-abv blends approximating the three main Lambrusco styles that would go into 650ml crown-capped bottles below four atmospheres and hit the shelf below $15 msrp. My thesis is that varietal labeling has become dead weight and we need to revisit wines of style. Plus: bubbles are fun, Lambrusco is awesome, and we can do it all in stainless and in turn-and-burn fashion with on-point winemaking, blend smartly, be delicious and still have a sense of terroir. We need to keep old Lodi vines in the ground, we can integrate some bulk – the possibilities are endless, but largely depend on distribution. A business plan is in the works… Wine of the Month The wine of the month should always be unique and affordable. This is not that wine, and I apologize. But, it was a white whale wine for me. Coming up as a winemaker Moueix’s name had an aura of hushed reverence like Gray Kunz or Georges Bataille: he dry farmed and never acidified or filtered, and these were VERY expensive bottles, the opposite of 17% ABV Sine Qua Non. Not natty (we are talking Petrus here–the good funk) but pushing, hard. Legend has it that he emptied a fermenter full of estate Cabernet into the drain when a concerned cellarhand adjusted the acidity–purity does not compromise. He also admitted to screwing up fermentations, getting Brett, etc. Wtf? Setting the scene: the 2012 vintage is meh, the magazines had it all wrong. It was a fruit-driven lightweight-year that was overcropped and without structure. First sip: whoa this is light. Silken and medium-weight, purely red-fruit driven that felt like a lazy Sangiovese, broad and smooth and full of cherry fruit. The middle was almost Grenache, crystalline and light, floating, and absolutely NOT as expected and very undramatic. Pretty, gentle dusty tannins, but fancy? I felt…disappointed. And then it happened, like a gentle wave that slowly ebbs into another, and then explodes over the rocks. What seemed like a disappointing meh slowly unfurled. Warren Winiarski would make people crazy by saying he wanted his Cabernet’s tannins to unfold like a peacock’s tail. Here, the tail slowly unfolded and shimmered, like the murmuration of 100,000 birds fluidly shifting and careening as a single continuous element. Gentle electrical currents danced around while carrying red cherry rock this way and that with flecks of mint and strawberry. I sat there for 30 seconds letting it play out, staring at the ceiling while I tuned out my tablemates. I went back again and again, getting it out of my mouth as fast as possible so I could experience the subtle fireworks on the tongue and the weightlessness of it all. I couldn’t really compare it to Nebbiolo with the lack of acid and tannin, but the ethereal nature felt close, and it wasn’t brash red wine minerality (or call it what you will) like from a volcanic island, or angular. It was pure bottled energy with a silent beginning and expansive end. Never had anything like it before. Chapeau sir. |
