Collecapretta "Malvasia dello Scarparo" Umbria, Italy 2023
Collecapretta "Malvasia dello Scarparo" Umbria, Italy 2023
FROM SELECTIONATUREL:
THE WINE: The "Scarparo," or the Cobbler/Shoemaker of Terzo la Pieve owned this small vineyard of Malvasia Bianca for almost ten years in complete abandonment. The Mattioli family have recovered the vines, cutting the brambles and giving them a defined structure to lean on. 100% Malvasia from 70 year old vines. Spontaneous fermentation with 3 days skin maceration. Aged in stainless steel. No added sulfur and no filtering or fining.
THE PRODUCER: The Mattioli family has been in the tiny hamlet the Romans once called Collecapretta (hill of the goats) since the 1100's. For generations the Mattioli have been cultivating the rugged hillsides of southern most Umbria. Located just outside of Spoleto, in the near-impossible-to-find borgo called Terzo la Pieve, today's farm is a scant 8 hectares in total; 2 planted to a mixture of local olives trees, 2 ha of farro and other ancient grains and ~ 4 ha of indigenous old vines. Vittorio Mattioli, his wife Anna and their daughter Annalisa live together with 3 generations of their family inside the tiny village overlooking the valley below with the high Apennine Mountains and Gran Sasso looming in the background. The elevation is some 500+ meters and the soils are a mixture of calcium and iron rich clay with outcroppings of tufo and travertine limestone. Though the total production of Collecapretta is only some 8000 bottles in a good year, the family chooses to vinify many different cuvee's in hopes of expressing the vineyard and grape varieties at their best.
All the wines are made in much the same fashion: natural fermentation takes place in open-top cement containers without temperature control or sulfur additions. The wines then age for various amounts of time in glass-lined cement vats or resin tank before bottling in synchrony with the waning lunar cycle. There is no sulfur used at any point in the winemaking process. All farming in the vineyards is completely natural, only composts made from their own animals are used to aid vine health.