Tag: italian wine

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Not Vinitaly

Late April, the cherry blossom, gorse and rapeseed is out and lots of wines are freshly bottled. Where are we? Verona for Vinitaly of course!
Except that of course we are not. Covid-19 has seen to that, so here we all are in Lockdown, and it really does seem to be everyone. The skies are free from vapour trails and the supermarkets have run out of flour. Again.

The 2019 wines from The English Winemaker are actually still in tank, which is what we had decided in any case, but the logistics of bottling are a bit interesting due to lack of staff, and well, bottles. Businesses across the world are feeling the effect, and the wine industry is no different. I should be out and about selling the end of the 2018s and drumming up interest for the 2019s, instead I’m not.

On a happy note we re-tasted the tank sample of the Field Blend, so it had been in bottle (not properly bottled, just squirted out of the tank into glass) for about 8 weeks. It has calmed down quite impressively, it is still super aromatic and the tannins are still quite feisty but there is more harmony and it definitely developing in the right way. The 2018 Dry Moscato “Mascot” was also revisited, so about 15 months in bottle, and it is looking top notch even though I say so myself.

If you are interested in getting hold of some of the 2018s (Barbera and skinsy Dry Moscato), or would like to express interest in the 2019s once there are samples available please do get in touch.

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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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A bit more press

Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan were in Italy recently and went along to the Polenzo Tasting in Piemonte. They have highlighted just 13 wines for special mention. One from good friends at De Marie in Barbaresco https://demarie.com/?lang=en and a Piemonte Barbera D.O.P with a rather lovely label from Vanessa Stone http://www.vanessastoneartist.com/

The full article can be found here: https://exoticwinetravel.com/glimpse-world-wine-merchant/

To quote them about The English winemaker Barbera:

” This wine is made with 25% whole cluster fermentation and indigenous yeasts. No additional sulfur is added. There are notes of stems, ripe red fruit, and pepper. This is a hardcore natural wine with gorgeous fruit. Score: 90/100 “

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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.

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