Tag: barbera

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Wine labels

I am fortunate to work with Vanessa Stone for the artwork on The English Winemaker labels, and we have been choosing images of Italy for her to render in cut paper for The Italian Field Blend label.

The two images that we used on the 2018 wines will be carried forward to the 2019 versions, but there are going to be some minor changes to the names of the wines. The Barbera caused some minor issues with the board of classification for D.O.C status, which was not a big problem but it took up a lot of time and energy for no particular reason. As a result I am going to de-classify all the wines from the 2019 vintage down to Vino da Tavola, the main downside of which is that I will not be able to say “Barbera” on the label on the wine made from Barbera, but thems the rules.

The three wines from 2019 will therefore be:

  • The Italian Red – 100% Barbera with the bluebell wood papercut on the label
  • The Italian Orange – 100% Moscato fermented dry on skins with the wheat field papercut on the label
  • The Italian Field Blend – A co-fermented blend of grapes all picked on the same day in roughly the percentages they grown in the vineyard, based on Barbera and Moscato with some Nebbiolo, Dolcetto and Gamba di Pernice. The label will feature a bespoke papercut of the Italian landscape that the wine is from.
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Italian vintage recap

The 2019 vintage in Northern Italy is now complete and the wines are safely wrapped up in tank.

  • First pressing of Field Blend
  • Free run Barbera
  • Racked Moscato

The fruit for the dry Moscato “Mascot” was the very first fruit picked the season. This had the potential for the fermentation to start slowly, but actually kicked in and was merrily bubbling away within 24 hours. I slightly increased the volume of whole bunch fruit and cut back on the cap plunging but more or less the same procedure as the 2018 wine. Fewer days on skins post fermentation has led to a wine with a fine texture and a really elegant palate .

The Barbera has been fermented in the same two old tonneaux 500 litre barrels as last year. The minor finesses have been an earlier picking and fewer punch downs but otherwise a carbon copy of the successful 2018 wine. The major change for the 2019 will be that I am de-classifying out of the Italian DOC/DOP system completely. I will have significantly less paperwork to deal with, but I won’t be able to say “Barbera” on the label. Current working title is “Both Barrels” for reasons that are apparent.

New for 2019 is the Field Blend. I harvested only indigenous Piemontese varietals in roughly the proportions that they are grown in the vineyard and co-fermented them in one old tonneaux. It’s not exact, but we have roughly 35% Moscato which was all fermented as whole bunch, 35% Barbera, 10% Nebbiolo, 10% Dolcetto and 10% Gamba di Pernice (you might have to look that one up). In my head I thought I might end up with a light, chillable, smashable Summer red. It’s not even remotely turned out like that; deeply aromatic on the nose but super savoury and dense on the palate with a cobweb of superfine tannins holding it altogether. I love it and I’m slightly over excited by it considering the tiny volume made.

The intention is to release the Moscato and Field Blend in the late Spring of 2020 and the Barbera in the early Autumn of 2020. Anticipated volumes are not more than 80 cases of Moscato and Barbera and in the region of 25 cases of the Field Blend.

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Pre Harvest Italian visit 2019

The temperature difference between England and Italy is enormous from the get go this year. 8 degrees at Stansted, 32 in Milan and it was 10 degrees cooler there than it had been the previous week!
If the weather in Italy stays as good as this we will be looking at a very early vintage indeed.

The first order of business was to visit Tenute Sella in Lessona, up in the Alto Piemonte. We are working on a collaborative project this year that sees a separate set of ferments being done The English Winemaker way with 100% Nebbiolo. This is a long term project that won’t see any wines being released until late 2021 at the earliest.

Stage 2 was to confirm the wines at Villa Giada. The easy bit was to get the dry Moscato “Mascot” and the Barbera green lit as they are going down so well from the 2018 vintage we’re more or less doublingproduction in 2019. The trickier bit was having another pitch for the vetoed Field Blend from last year. Andrea being the extraordinary man he is has agreed to give it a go this time, we’ll take a harvest snapshot from across his vineyards, picking just what is ripe on the day and co-ferment them. The Barbera will definitely not be ripe enough but we’ll be looking at Moscato, Sauvignon Blanc, Cortese, Chardonnay, Merlot and Dolcetto. I think we’ll end up with a pretty crunchy chillable red, but we”ll see what comes out!

  • Barbera
  • Sella Cellar
  • Omaggio Sella
  • Small car hot day
  • Mascot and Sausage
  • The Hermit Ram interloper
  • Nebbiolo
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And so to bottle

The skin fermented “orange” Dry Moscato and the barrel fermented whole bunch Barbera chilled out, literally, over the Winter. When we got there in late January there was snow on the ground and the vineyards were looking quite spectacular.

Tasting the wines was also pretty special. The Moscato has dropped a little of it’s golden hew and looks a little more “normal”, but still lives up to it’s original promise. Similarly the Barbera is terribly easy to drink, but not just a purely good juice way: there is some great complexity in its joyfulness.

We ran the wines through the lab to get final technical analysis which yielded good and better news. The Alcohol levels are lower than expected and certainly lower than many wines from Italy in 2018 The sulphite levels on the Moscato had to be slightly topped up to 30mg/l (of an allowable 220mg/l in Europe, and 70mg/l for Raw Wine classification). The Barbera has a naturally occurring level of 28 mg/l so we made no addition.

After these minor revelations it was a matter of squirting it all into bottles. Really the only high-tech part of the whole wine making process, and quite Balletic to boot. The bottles come from a very environmentally aware factory and have a proportion of recycled glass and are as light as possible: which is a win all round (unless you like those bottles you can lose your hand in the bottom of). The clear glass has in-built UV protection, which means that light strike is not the massive issue it would be normally with colourless glass.

  • Number 1 of 908
  • Number 1 of 771
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Piemonte 2018: The Red (and a White update)

September continued to be glorious in stark contrast to the wretched conditions of late July and early August. Not quite as great as the contrast with leaving Stansted airport at 8 in the morning with rain and 8 degrees C for company and landing in Milan  it it apparently still being Summer: 33 degrees and a pure azure sky!

The fruit for The Red was selected from the vineyard plot that provides the fruit for “La Quercia”, this is a high South facing slope on Limestone. I took the decision to harvest slightly earlier due to the rapidly rising sugar levels and not wanting an overly alcoholic wine. A first pass through the vineyard selected the fruit perfect for using as whole bunch with the second pass for the de-stemmed portion.

The whole bunch fruit was then hand sorted and divided equally between 5 year old barrels (previously used for aging Barbera). The barrels were topped up with de-stemmed fruit. It’s worked out to be the same ratio whole bunch as the Moscato.

The Moscato has been ticking away quite perfectly. The mass of the skins has helped maintain a more even temperature and only need a gentle hand plunge to keep the cap wet and active. By late September the juice had fermented out to dry and was sealed up, still on its skins, to get to know itself for a few weeks. We naturally had to have a final taste before it was locked away and it is looking amazing: obviously full of solids still but the bright golden yellow colour is extraordinary, on the nose there was tangerine pith and acacia honey, the palate had not only that essence of grape but a touch of clove and all zinging off a nervy vein of salinity. Very exciting to taste.

Dry Moscato

The morning after processing the Barbera fermentation had already started spontaneously (just like the Moscato) which is a great sign!

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North West Italy 2018 pre-harvest

In the heart of the Moferrato, South of Asti, grows arguably the finest Barbera and Moscato in Piedmont, so the finest on the whole of the peninsula.  This means very little of course next to the greatness of Nebbiolo, but the fruit from these limestone and sandy marls on softly rolling hills produce world class wines.

Sweet fizzy and low alcohol wine might not be your cup of tea, but the apparent simplicity of these wines belies their extraordinary character. Not only that but they age gracefully and rewardingly, if you see an old Moscato d’Asti languishing at the back of a shelf in a wine shop, grab it, you will be surprised. After a gawky phase at 2 years the secondary development mirrors the primary but in a more robust way. At 8 years old they can quite extraordinary.

There is pressure from producers for there to be a DOC/G for a dry Moscato wine, but the wheels of Italian bureaucracy being what they are this could take a decade to achieve. In the meantime we have to label with made up names with Vino Bianco  on the label and absolutely cannot, not ever, put “Moscato” on the label.

Barbera from around Nizza Monferrato finally achieved official recognition as being of exceptional quality in 2014, Barbera Nizza DOCG is the top of the quality tree and in some ways put the Barbera d’Alba/d’Asti debate to rest. This is where The English Winemakers fruit for the 2018 Whole Bunch Barbera will be sourced from.