Elegant wine with good acidity, it develops pleasant notes of acacia honey as it ages that make it ideal for pairing with blue cheeses and dry pastries.
The vines for this wine, Muller-Thurgau, were brought from Austria and planted at Custoza in 1960. The aim was to make a typical fresh and aromatic wine, but the latitude and the mesoclimate made an early maturation with a low acidity and this is not ideal for a still wine. On 26th August 1990, when the new cellar was not completed, but the Muller-Thurgau was perfectly mature in the vineyards, they decided to make a passito wine instead.
Using the drying technique – appassimento – specific to Veneto, bunches of grapes, harvested when ripe, are put to rest in small wooden trays and stored until they have lost 40% of their water content. This reduction in water causes the remaining juice to have a high concentration of flavour and sugar, features key to several wines in Veneto including this Passito Bianco.
Subsequently the grapes are de-stemmed and pressed, initially fermented in contact with the skins for about 72 hours. The skins are then removed and fermentation continues, very slowly, in small barrels. Given the very high sugar concentration following withering, fermentation usually stops with an alcohol content close to 15 degrees and residual sugars greater than 150 grams / liter.
Delicious.