Foradori "Lezèr" Vigneti delle Dolomiti, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy 2024

FROM LOUIS/DRESSNER:

THE WINE: 70% Teroldego/15% Schiava/10% Lagrein/5% Merlot. Lezèr ("light" in local dialect) was a new wine born of the challenging 2017 vintage, when Foradori's Teroldego crop was roughed up by a summer hailstorm. The remains were turned into this short-maceration red wine, named for its light color and body. This first Foradori vin de soif was a wild success, and the family has continued making the wine in every vintage sense. They experiment every year with the mix of varieties, vessels and percentage of whole bunches. The fruit comes from a total of 8 hectares of vines scattered about in their village and beyond, on the sandy, gravelly alluvial soils so typical of this Dolomitic terroir. The spontaneous fermentation, short maceration and brief aging take place in a combination of cement, steel, old wood and amphora. Like the wine in the bottle, the label changes slightly each vintage.

THE PRODUCER: Elisabetta’s journey in her “wine life” is a familiar tale, but one that we never tire of hearing. The early death of her father unexpectedly hurtled her to the management of the family estate. Though “born among the vines” as she says, she took the helm at first more from a sense of duty than one of passion or vocation. Eventually, however, that passion and vocation came through the work itself, both in the vines and in the cellar. Despite her star rising as "the queen of Teroldego" throughout the 1990's, by 2000 Elisabetta had lost all personal connection to her work. A path of questioning, experimentation and intuition (including everything from biodynamics, massale selection and the use of amphorae) eventually led her to give up any sense of chasing market trends of the “wine industry” to develop the estate towards the goal of making wines respectful of the soil and the local grapes she wants to honor, and using the techniques she found more interesting, less invasive, and more wine “holistic”.