Tag: dry moscato

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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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Vintage 2019: Start your engines!

And we’re off!

Beautiful Moscato grapes are in from the vineyard and fermentation is off and away. We selected a portion of the cleanest fruit, well it was all clean to be fair, to use for the whole bunch element and the rest went in de-stemmed. Started off smelling like really verdant grape juice but by the next morning it is was Acacia honey and stem ginger. Amazing stuff.

The rest of the crop is a little tardy this year so hanging fire on the Barbera and Field Blend for a minute or two yet.

  • Freshly picked Moscato
  • Whole bunch into the vat
  • Topped up with de-stemmed
  • Morning commute
  • Not quite ripe Barbera
  • End of of a busy day
  • Merchants for Winemakers
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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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Piemonte, The White!

It was a bit of a funny old growing season, started off wet then got rather warm. Vigour was our biggest problem so mowing and haircutting the vines were the major jobs. Then it rained and we all got rather worried, then it all dried out and it was all okay again.

The original forecast was to start picking the Moscato on the 20th of August, we actually picked in early September: beautiful fruit it was too. Perfect ripeness, no rot, no wasp, no dilution, just a little bit of sunburn here and there. Lovely stuff.

Moscato in Piemonte is a bit of a religion and the rules are super strict about what you can do with it and still call it Moscato. Essentially it has to be sweet, fizzy and low alcohol. Mine is going to none of those things!

All the wines this year are going to be in very small quantities of around about 600 bottles. The Moscato is a good proportion whole bunch and fermenting on it’s skins. How long it spends on the skins post fermentation is yet to be decided but we are looking at at least 28 days.

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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.