Wine Review: LUNAE Vermentino Colli di Luni D.O.C. 2024

100% Vermentino; steel fermented, aged in steel on fine lees for 3 months; fruit from controlled vineyards in the foothills of Luni, Castelnuovo Magra, and Sarzana. Price in the $25-$35 range. 12.5% Alc. This Vermentino from Liguria isn’t an especially aromatic wine. It’s more about texture and movement. It opens briefly with generous ripe pear and citrus with a short spell of lees-derived creaminess rounding out the mid-palate. But then mineral discipline takes over. Fine-grained dry extract appears early, under the fruit, giving the wine an interesting textural component which becomes more apparent as the mid-palate fades into the finish, where bitter quinine and citrus add firmness. The nose is clean and at first fruit-led. To the wine’s credit, there is little overt floral perfume. It stays composed and characteristically Italian rather than showy. A rosemary-inflected herbal note gives the fruit some Mediterranean contour, while crushed rock becomes more prominent with aeration…