Foradori "Sgarzon" Teroldego MAGNUM, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy 2016

FROM LOUIS/DRESSNER:

THE WINE: 100% Teroldego. Local dialect for "vine shoot", "Sgarzon" is a cooler, sandier 2.5 hectares of vines on the Campo Rotaliano plateau near the winery in the foothills of the Dolomites. Elisabetta planted the vines in guyot from massale cuttings in 1984. The farming is certified-biodynamic and the harvest is by hand. The bunches are destemmed, with the grapes going directly into clay amphorae (tinajas from J. Padilla in Spain) for an open-top, spontaneous fermentation without sulfur; the vessels are then closed for 6-8 months of maceration. The wine is bottled without fining or filtering and with its only small dose of sulfur. Sgarzon and its identically made companion wine, Morei (from a warmer, stonier vineyard area nearby) develop more quickly in clay than the foudre-aged Foradori and Granato and are thus released earlier.

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”.