Tasting notes:
Azienda Agricola Cortese ORANGE-utan. A beautiful unique orange colour. On the nose there are notes of grapefruit, lemons, with hints of spice, balsamic, white pepper and mint. On the palate there is an excellent structure, with lovely fruit flavours, all supported by good balancing acidity ,giving it an attractive freshness.
Food Match:
A highly versatile wine, it can only be consumed as an aperitif and is perfect in combination with fish dishes with oriental scents and pasta.
Region/Producer:
While Stefano and Marina Girelli are from Trento in the extreme north of Italy, it is the island of Sicily in the country’s deep south that has captured their hearts. Stefano realised many years ago that Sicily was generally underrated as quality wine producing region and that the potential for making premium wines was tremendous. Crucially, he also recognised that conditions for producing organic, low-intervention wines are perfect on the Sicilian island.
At Cortese, they produce wine in the most traditional and natural way to reflect the true character of the estate’s terroir and its grape varieties. Taking tradition as their inspiration, they started to employ ancient wine-making techniques such as fermentation in terracotta. The resulting wines reflect the combination of modern technology and traditional techniques, with every nuance of the terroir showing through.
Hand harvested in mid-September into small crates. The grapes are destemmed, gently crushed and each and the grape variety is vinified separately The wines are fermented on the skins, at a controlled temperature of between 17 and 19 °C. The Inzolia is macerated for 2-3 weeks, Zibibbo for 6 weeks with daily, gentle punching down during the 7-10 days of fermentation. Once the fermentation is finished the wines are then blended together and left on fine lees for about 3 months before bottling.
For more information about the producer: https://www.agricolacortese.com/en/vini/nostru/
