Here I am with a short update concerning vintage 2012 @AgricolaCirelli.
On sept the 26th I harvested the montepulciano grapes for making the cerasuolo amphora. Outside temperature 25 degrees C, nice and fresh with a morning fog which has been blown away too soon unfortunately.
Going into the anfora (amphora)
Grapes were is a good shape and health; 20 babo grades. The colour of the must is simply charming and I felt in Provence for a while… I used the free-run must only.
On sept 27th and 28th I harvested the grapes for the montepulciano amphora instead. Outside temperatures went up to 29 degrees (S#]t!) Again: healthy with a well balance; 20 babo grades as well and free-run must only.
Free run juice
During the night of the 27th the cerasuolo and the montepulciano musts have naturally started the fermentation;
Fermenting must
great emotion this early morning to see the bubbles bubbling within the amphoras…" Un abbraccio, Francesco
Looks fun. Wish I could be there. A huge hug to Francesco and Michela from the West Coast!
Montepulciano: harvested on sept the 10th, sept the 15th, sept the 16th. Please note that montepulciano is averagely harvested during the first 2 weeks of October…
High temperatures during the day (30 degrees), little bit lower and fresher at night (22-24). Was very hard to harvest with that warm climate but we did and I am quite happy because I lost 5 kilos! Now I look like a model and I am seriously thinking about changing job eheh!
I decided to harvest so early because I want to continue focusing on freshness, acidity, finesse, lightness. In that way I hope I’ve been able to partially save all these fundamental elements to my wines. Of course I was obliged to loose a little bit of poliphenolic maturation but I hope that aging and refining will smooth tannins. I am not worried at all by the colour since I don’t like deep dark wines.
The musts have been fermented by piede de cuvee and it is now resting in amphorae, cements and steel tanks.
Trebbiano: lovely vintage. I am sure I will love the white wines from this year. I harvested on sept the 20 and the grapes were at 19 babo therefore I am expecting a long life trebbiano.
Beatiful grapes, beautiful colour, perfect wellness. It is still fermenting and there are 3-4 days more.
A couple of weeks before harvest a journalist who writes for the English wine specialist Jancis Robinson asked me how I thought this year’s harvest would be. I replied that my impressions were mixed. August and September were overly hot and dry, but that I believed that we should expect many surprises.
He entitled his article “Montalcino’s surprising 2011 vintage” and quoted my letters
But, indeed, the 2011 vintage certainly brought many unexpected results....
We have around 10 acres of vineyard, all 100% Sangiovese, from which we make the Brunello di Montalcino, Rosso di Montalcino and Sant’Antimo.
Most of our land is situated around our 500 year-old farmhouse where we live above a winery which we converted from the old stables after planting the vineyards in 1998/9.
We have a small, family-run winery which we farm organically/biodynamically. In the winery we like to say that our wines are just fermented grapes that have had nothing added and nothing subtracted. So we’re particularly sensitive to the characteristics of the grape clusters we bring in from the fields.
On a hot year like this you could expect to find small, concentrated grapes which would very likely produce wines with overly high alcohol and low acidity levels. Yet a Brunello depends heavily on a high acidity to give its kick and longevity, so you can imagine that we were very anxious.
And here came our big surprise: we knew that the grapes were healthy but we had never seen themhealthier and juicier, with gorgeous tannins and a great acidity. Even better than expected.
Perhaps because we had left enough grapes on the vines, so they didn’t concentrate too much, perhaps because we had managed the foliage in the canopy well this year, who knows, but we’re certainly not complaining.
Each morning of harvest you shoot out of bed at dawn filled with excitement. Its hard to describe a more exhilarating sensation. You have everything ready; the ripe grapes hanging on the vines, the empty vats, the pickers and the cutting scissors, and you just wait for the them all to get together.
We started harvest on an overcast but warm Sunday, September 25th. All our family and friends came to help gather in the first selection of best grapes from the fields in front of our house.
I cooked mammoth quantities of “penne con salsciccia e pomodoro” for lunch which we ate outside in the shade of the olive trees. The mood was happy and by that evening we had filled the first of our 35 hl slavonian oak vats.
What an emotion!
We stayed up working till around 1am washing out the picking crates, cleaning the de-stemming machine and pumping over the grapes in their juice. The marathon had started.
Over the following seven days we slept less and less while doing rigorous selections in all the fields; first passing through and picking the perfect clusters and only then the rest.
Each selection passes into its own vat, so we’ve ended up with ten different vats with ten different selections!
Fermentation started in the first vat around three days after it was filled, and slowly the other vats kicked in.
Of course we are not adding any artificial yeasts; we like the grapes to ferment on the yeasts that sit with them in the vineyard. It makes for more unique wines.
We now have our ten fermenting vats bubbling away under our bedroom. They range in alcohol content from 13.5% to 14.70%, the colour is intense and the aromas are good.
We have to get up at least three or four times in the night to check on them, to see that the temperatures haven’t rocketed or that no vat is overflowing.
Our youngest son just left for college and we’ve become “empty-nesters”. So the full vats are our new fledglings and while I miss him madly they help ease the way.
We’re now thinking about the 2012 harvest in San Polino. Does anybody want to come and do the nights?
Yesterday we started the harvest of Barbera and we ended the white grapes. Our father Aldo is very happy with the fermentation of Dolcetto and he said that there are some steel tanks of Dolcetto d'Alba Coste&Fossati very very nice.
As you all know, I am quite allergic to any kind of newsletter or “news from the winery” and always try to avoid any communication, even if asked a few times. Blame it on me.
But Sunday morning something happened. Something so unexpected that made us all happy and thankful and I couldn’t but write to share this happiness with you all.
We woke up at 6am, not too early for a harvest day at Vajra, but early enough to see the last part of the night fading away and letting space to the dawn. The sky was bright, no clouds, and plenty of stars, with a crispy wind and a temperature of 11°C (52°F, roughly9 Celsius degreesless than the previous day!). So, when finally the sun came, we could see the glory of a perfect Nebbiolo day: no clouds ( we have had a foggy, very Piemontese weather for the previous two weeks, which culminated on a light rain in the night between Friday and Saturday), no humidity, a strong wind from the Alps that dried the night dew and the residues of the week-end rain in a bunch of hours. And –oh yes- I could finally see the Monviso (that tall and lonely mountain that you see in the distance, in the picture above, sorry for the poor quality of the image). Monviso is the first mountain I see every day from my window, and to see it again after days and days of Nebbia, you can’t imagine the pleasure of that moment!
My father said these days are called OTTOBRATE, let’s say “the October days”, when the last sunshine comes to Piemonte, the sun is warm, but the cold continental winds already fight and ram the Alps to overcome them and conquer Italy. It’s a perfect combination of climatic factors for a rough variety such as Nebbiolo, and you can feel it, just by standing in the wind.
So, where is the point? We left some of our Nebbiolo grapes still ripening on the vines. We risked, as usual, and left some of the fruit behind to wait for a perfect phenolic ripening, despite the alert of rain for the week-end. As always, our risk is a move of hope: we look the sky and simply ask for some more days of good weather. What if we were unheard? Well, we would use that fruit for some table wine. But with that genius of my father, hazard is quite safe and there we are.
Ok, got to go back to cellar now. Sometimes during the night I will complete my thesis report, since I am getting my degree on the 23rd. Anyhow, I promise I will be diligent and write you more about the 2009 vintage in a bunch of weeks. Here a few pictures taken in the last days.
A presto
Giuseppe per Aldo, Milena, Francesca e Isidoro Vaira.
Barolo village and castle, from La Volta vineyard where we harvested today. Exposure: south-south-east, around 12am.
Nebbiolo from a CVT-142 clone.
Average data for the 142 clone (one of the 6 planted in La Volta Vineyard):
Gabri, il braccio destro di Aldo. He has been with us for almost 20 years, and he is still one of the few in short-sleeve today… look at the blue sky above, no clouds on the horizon.
A picture of some days ago: Aldo with Federico, Maria Jose ( a young Chilean winemaker) and Claudio on the sorting table.
Il caldo straordinario della settimana scorsa ha portato ad una maturazione anticipata. L'uva è bellissima molto sana e con gusto pieno, come annata assomiglia al 2007.
Nel frattempo in cantina l'uva da base spumante vendemmiata la settimana scorsa sta gia fermentando. Eccovi alcune foto prese stamattina a Castel Noarna.
Ieri abbiamo vendemmiato l'ultimo chardonnay del 2009. Il 'pergola doppia' che di solito è il nostro migliore, quello che normalmente viene selezionato per le riserve come il Campogrande e l'Emotional Wine. Anche quest'anno la qualità sembra ottima.
Visto che il tempo è bello e l'uva matura abbiamo vendemmiato anche i rossi. Uve dolcissime molto sane. Per i rossi potrebbe essere un'annata eccezionale !
Questa vendemmia è senz'altro eccezionale. In 20 anni che facciamo vino a Castel Noarna non è mai successo che il tempo in vendemmia sia così favorevole.
(This harvest is without a doubt exceptional. In the 20 years that we are making wine at Castel Noarna the weahter has never been this favorable during harvest.)
Ieri e l'altro ieri abbiamo terminato la vendemmia delle uve bianche.
(Yesterday and the day before we finished the harvest of white grapes.)
Abbiamo raccolto una bellissima Nosiola (sua sorella ha già finito di fermentare ...). L'uva si presenta ancora sanissima ma più matura e con aromi più evoluti. Questo ci permetterà di fare un vino ancora più complesso formato dal blend delle due vendemmie. Anche questa come la sua sorellina sarà fermentata spontaneamente con i suoi lieviti indigeni.
Nosiola 2009
Nosiola 2009 e la Vallagarina
Abbiamo raccolto anche il Riesling Renano. L'uva aveva caratteristiche straordinarie per questa varietà : 19 babo e 6.5 per mille di acidità . Per molti questi dati non vorranno dire molto. In pratica significa circa 13 gradi di alcool naturale con una buona acidità (che da freschezza al vino). Il Riesling contribuirà al Bianco di Castelnuovo 2009.
Lunedì 28 e martedì 29 abbiamo vendemmiato il Cabernet Sauvignon. Il nostro storico vigneto (ormai ha 20 anni, uno dei primi vigneti a spalliera in Trentino !) quest'anno ci ha donato un uva straordinaria.
Assaggiare i chicchi del Cabernet Sauvignon quest'anno era una vera delizia: frutto, acidità , croccantezza della buccia, sanità .... Una vendemmia eccezionale !
Le Chiusure. Notice the trellising in the vineyard? Pergola Veronese (arched over the heads of the pickers like they do in Verona). This provides for more air to circulate around the bunches of grapes so there is less opportunity for fungus and rot.
Erbaluce grapes ready for harvest. Erbaluce literally translated means "grass of light".
Everything is done by hand at Azienda Agricola Favaro.
Benito and Camillo Favaro hard at work during harvest.
