There are wines that behave like polite citizens: civil, well-mannered, eager to please. And then there are wines like Torre Mora Cauru 2022 Etna Rosso, which do not perform; they haunt.
Cauru speaks in the same tone that Nico uses in “Janitor of Lunacy”—a tone scraped raw from grief, ritual, and self-reckoning. When Nico sings, “Careful of the moon, she’ll turn your mind around,” she could just as well be whispering from the basalt soils beneath Etna’s eastern flank, warning you that this wine is not here to flatter your palate. It is here to turn your mind around.
Torre Mora’s Nerello Mascalese, touched by the ghost of Nerello Cappuccio, is forged on black volcanic sand- land that knows both birth and annihilation. The 2022 Cauru tastes like something rescued from the forge of a forgotten forge spirit:
- Aromas: pomegranate skin, dried roses singed at the edges, embers of cedar
- Palate: taut red currant, iron filings, cracked pepper and ashes
- Texture: a mineral blade—no fat, no indulgence, only intention
- Finish: long, spectral, slightly bitter, like the afterimage of a memory you should have released years ago
Where other Etna Rosso wines chase prettiness, Cauru chases truth, which is always more dangerous- ask me about it!!! It stands in the glass like Nico stood on stage-intense, beautiful, unapologetic, severe, an emissary of some interior kingdom most people would rather not visit. Sublime.
Shall we go back to “Janitor of Lunacy”? It is not a song. It is an incantation. Nico calls out the forces that distort us—false friends, false gods, false comforts—and demands a reckoning: “Take care of the beast… move him around.” The janitor she invokes is a custodian of disorder, a watcher of shadows, the one who forces the palace of illusion to collapse.
Is this not precisely what volcanic wines do? They do not give you the polished, oaky promises of mainland aristocracy. They give you stone, scar, compression, eruption—the emotional register of a landscape always on the verge of tearing itself open.
Cauru 2022 carries that same ritualistic stripping-down: no makeup, no ornaments, no choreography—just the pure timbre of origin, like Nico’s harmonium droning beneath the voice of someone who has seen too much and refuses to lie about it.
Etna teaches discipline: it burns, it rebuilds, it remembers. Nerello Mascalese is its archivist. Nico teaches discipline: she removes the masks we cling to. Her voice is an austerity that reveals the architecture of our longing.
Torre Mora Cauru 2022 and “Janitor of Lunacy” share the same structural backbone:
- Minimalism as power
- Restraint as revelation
- Beauty found only after surrender
- A dialogue between fragility and ferocity
When you drink Cauru, you participate in a liturgy of volcanic truth.
When you listen to Nico, you participate in a liturgy of emotional truth.
Combine them, and the boundaries soften: the wine becomes the song’s mineral echo, the song becomes the wine’s psychological landscape.
This is not a wine for the weekend hedonist. This is a wine for people who understand that beauty often arrives wearing the mask of severity—and that the mask is part of the message.
Torre Mora Cauru 2022 will not hold your hand ( not a McCartney/ Lennon tune). It will not give you warmth without asking for introspection. It will walk with you into the dark corridor of your own palate, point at a door you’ve never opened, and whisper: “Go on.” Just like Nico.
Drink it alone the first time.
Not with friends.
Not with dinner.
Let the wine and the song confront each other inside you until the tension becomes revelation.
Reni
NEUwine 
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