Last Of The Romans, Rebranded
TASTING NOTES: “Our flagship Cabernet Sauvignon, named in honor of Ezio Donati.” (AbV 14.5%)
VARIETALS: 100% Cabernet Sauvignon
BARRELS: 20 months: including 22% new Eastern European oak, 36% new American oak
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Ezio — the name honoring family patriarch Ezio Donati —
Every time I see that name I think of the same guy, and it’s not the one on this label. Ezio Auditore da Firenze is the protagonist of three separate Assassin’s Creed games, which means an entire generation of people spent hundreds of collective hours parkouring across Renaissance Florence assassinating popes on his behalf. He is, by video game logic, one of the most efficient killers in history — hidden blade, smoke bombs, a wardrobe full of hooded robes he apparently never gets dry-cleaned.
But the name itself predates the game by about 1,500 years, and its real history is weirder. It traces back to Aetius — Flavius Aetius, a Roman general in the twilight of the Western Empire who’s the guy historians credit with actually stopping Attila the Hun at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 AD. Edward Gibbon called him “the last of the Romans,” which is a genuinely brutal epitaph when you consider the empire had a few decades left to go and nobody after him was up to the job. So somewhere between a fifth-century general holding off history’s most famous invader and a fictional Florentine murdering his way through the Vatican, the name landed on a Central Coast wine label, presumably for reasons that have nothing to do with either of them.
ICYMI, you have two choices:
- Worried Summer heat might get to your wine before your wine gets to you? Order from the sale linked here, and we’ll get it to you at a cooler time of year!
- Want it shipped now? Every package during the summer will have protected temp control ground shipping for much of the country that takes longer but will ensure safe delivery. Expect up to two weeks for delivery. Now through the September 12th offer.
