Looking back on the years since the advent of the enoblogosphere in the second half of the 2000s, it’s clear now — at least to me — that the collective aversion to international grape varieties grown on Italian soil was misguided and even wrong-headed at times.

Italians are growing international grape varieties to appeal to the U.S. market and U.S. wine critics, the thinking went at the time. They were doing so at the expense of native grape varieties. As a result, they were abandoning tradition.

Today, it’s clear that the growers of the so-called Super Tuscans were partly trying to find new ways to be relevant in a changing market. In retrospect, we owe them a thanks for driving renewed interest in Italian wine when the category was struggling in North America. Those efforts opened many paths for future Italian growers. They were also trying to level the playing field by saying, hey, we can make world-class wines like the ones you already love!

There was another element that a lot of us — me included — overlooked: for many Italian growers, Cabernet Sauvignon et alia were part of a longstanding tradition that stretched back decades and even centuries before the Italian wine renaissance that took shape in the late 1990s.

One of those wines was San Leonardo from Trentino.

A generous colleague of mine recently shipped me a sample bottle of the 2019 (the current release) and we served it on the occasion of one of my Houston cousins’ birthdays. He’s a Cabernet Sauvignon lover.

The wine opened with a burst of vibrant fruit on the nose and palate. But as the wine aerated, the red stone and red berry flavors were swiftly balanced by earthiness and classic goudron. The oak was present but beautifully integrated — at just five years out — in this elegant wine. And from first sip to last, it retained a wonderful freshness that made it food-friendly and moreish.

Nearly 20 years after I started my blog, it turns out that I’m an Italian Cabernet Sauvignon lover after all.