Fredo wound up swimming with the fishes in an icy-cold Lake Tahoe. His brother Mike had his personal assistant whack him for not respecting the family. This wine sums up “Godfather II” quite nicely. Here you’ve got a bottle of Sangiovese grown in Paso freakin’ Robles, a place that gets so hot that it sometimes can make Turlock seem like the Eden of the San Joaquin Valley. The variety is best known as the key component of Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, and Vino Nobile de Montepulciano. It gets warm there, and there’s humidity, but it’s not like Paso Robles. They make classy wines outside of Sienna, usually involving a good dollop of svelte oak from new French barriques , and they’re aged for a while so they become ageworthy and collectible. Maybe sometimes you get around to drinking them. It used to be you could do a Chianti Classico with a nice bowl pasta or a pizza and it wouldn’t affect your ability to send your kids to college, but now, maybe you could talk to the wine shop’s mortgage negotiators to see if you’re worthy of wrangling an allocation.

But Sangiovese ain’t Cabernet Sauvignon, but even in Italy, it’s still got more cachet than Mammolo and it’s right on the cusp of being considered a “noble variety” outside of Italy, where it’s already pretty much considered as such, with the only serious competition coming from Nebbiolo. And in Paso Robles, they don’t know from hierarchies and such, other than Cab is King and pays the bills while the Rhône variety wines show the terroir better, are more compelling to make, and offer more bragging rights because they get higher scores from the critics. But why Sangiovese? Why not? Well, things change (which BTW is another terrific mob movie, written and directed by David Mamet and worth seeing if you’re unfamiliar with it).

Field Recordings is doing God’s work by playing around with a lot of obscure grape varieties and turning them into wines worth drinking. Sure, maybe a chillable Sangio made from Paso grapes would have them spinning in their graves outside of Sienna, but it’s a great wine at a reasonable price. Hardcore Italian winegeeks might consider such a thing sacrilege, but it’s a creative (and tasty) rethinking of a tried and true variety. Chill it down like they did Fredo and serve a fish, or with a burger, or maybe some chicken fried rice, or better yet, just get a pizza or a bowl of red-sauce pasta. Add dried Calabrian pepper flakes, of course. It’s not heresy if everyone is having fun, and fun is what you’ll have with Freddo.