At the heart of the Estate is the cellar, in Italian “La Cantina”. Only a few-minute-walk is needed to bring the hand-harvested cases directly to the cellar where the grapes are de-stemmed and fall directly into the hand-made amphora, each one holding around 800 litres (about 211 US gallons).
Wine-making
Here we work to ensure that the berries remain more or less intact and whole. Then we wait – until the fermentation starts. Sometimes we kick-start the fermentation by adding a small amount of must prepared earlier, and other times we wait until everything starts up on its own.
The white grapes can macerate for a few days and then we press them and return the must to the amphora. The red grapes, on the other hand, stay in contact with their skins until the completion of the alcoholic fermentation process, in general around 15 days.
Aging
When fermentation has taken place the wines are temporarily stored in tanks until all the must is completely fermented. At this point the must is returned to the amphora and there it remains until it is time for bottling. A few wines age in concrete tanks that have been onsite since we built the cellar.
We don’t use any chemical additives commonly used in winemaking, nor do we use clarifying agents. Our wines are unfiltered and the use of sulphites is extremely limited.
Bottling
When it comes to bottling we choose to use very lightweight glass, both for the environmental sustainability and the fact that they are nicer to handle.
All of our work is centred round leaving as much space as possible for the natural evolution of the wine. We transfer the wine into different containers only when necessary because we prefer the wine is left to rest, intervening as little as possible. During the last vintage of Balù and Rospič we didn’t age the wines in wood, as we had in the past for our Rossorigoni and Biancorigoni wines.
Once the wine is bottled it rests for a few months before heading out in the world to be sold and enjoyed.
