Az. Ag. Frank Cornelissen Munjebel Bianco 6va - Grecanico dorato, Coda di volpe, Caricante & Cataratto of the 2009 vintage; 13% abvLovely orange color. A sweet scent, very floral, dried herbs and spice (though I don't think it sees any oak?). It is strange in the way that it doesn't really seem terribly vinous in its fruit expression, but rather smells remarkably like fresh fruit: oranges. Slight spritz on opening, on the tannic end of orange wines of my experience, nice ripe fruit. It does have refreshing acidity to it, too, but the main structural component in this bottle at this point in time was tannin. I love it.
Az. Ag. Frank Cornelissen Munjebel Rosso 6 - Nerello Mascalese from 2008 and 2009; 14,5% abv
Lovely, immature, transparent yet deep red. Strongly lactic aroma upon opening that does go into the background with air, but doesn't completely disappear. Lovely pepper and dark berry aromas which remind me a little of unforced Syrah, except with sweeter fruit. Really lovely and juicy palate with very refreshing amounts of acidity despite its Southern origin. Nice tannins, too, noticeable and firm but palate-cleansing rather than mouth coating. Usually such high alcohol is somewhat apparent, but here I didn't even sense a little bit of heat on the finish (no doubt the cool serving temperature helped). Also lovely.
But what does MunJebel mean? I know that Jebel is Arabic for mountain, but what is the origin of the "mun" in front of it? Is it a corruption of the preposition "min" meaning "from"?
I thought both of these were excellent "natural" wines (or whatever the favored term at the moment is). I really enjoyed them and found them both fascinating, thought provoking and pleasurable, but I also think the pricing is a little high. When I can get such orange wines as Terpin's for less than half the price, I wonder why I should spend 30€ for a bottle of Cornelissen? But I guess this is one of the few very well known names of natural wine, so I shouldn't complain about them asking for sums that they evidently can get. But it is annoying because I would like to drink these more often than I can with such prices.