The flavor of crushed gravel in wine of Vallée d'Aoste
Discover the of Vallée d'Aoste wines revealing the of crushed gravel flavor during the olphactive analysis (nose) and during the gustative analysis (mouth).
Valle d'Aosta is the smallest and least populated region in Italy, only one-eighth the Size of neighbouring Piedmont. It covers a mountainous area in the far northwest of Italy, where the country's borders meet those of France and Switzerland.
Despite the region's small size and low profile, a wide range of red and white wines are produced from a selection of native and introduced Grape varieties. The most important of these is Picotendro, the local form of Nebbiolo.
Aosta is clearly influenced by its neighbours. French is the second official language, and French grape varieties are just as common as Italian ones. Chardonnay and Gamay grow side by side with Nebbiolo and Dolcetto.
In addition to the best-known varieties, the Regional Agricultural Institute has listed a selection of indigenous regional varieties.
Springtime brings the so-called ‘Caldaia di Maggio’ to Barolo, a noise similar to a kettle simmering that is caused by evaporating water in the soils. This year, however, it’s unlikely that this phenomenon will occur. Drought is affecting the entire north of Italy; predominantly the Langhe but also Valpolicella and Franciacorta. Not even Tuscany is spared. The vineyards are lacking the reserves of water that their soils usually contain at this time of year. Winter passed without snow in almost a ...
I’d like to say we took advantage of the lockdown and its related commotion to do a stock-take, explore new avenues, turn over intriguing stones, widen and deepen our drinking, taking careful notes as we went. Sadly, no. I won’t say we got stuck in a rut, but we did tend to stick with comfort wines – and “comfort”, in our case, means familiar. Regular readers of this quarterly column can probably guess the labels on the resulting empties. We have a wider range of comfort foods, I’m afraid, than ...
World wine production in 2021 is set to fall by 4% versus last year, to around 250 million hectolitres (mhl), equal to 25bn litres and close to the historic low witnessed in 2017, the International Organisation for Vine & Wine (OIV) has estimated. Its figures are preliminary, but they highlight the ‘severe impact’ of ‘adverse climatic conditions’ on the 2021 vintage in parts of Europe, said OIV director-general Paul Roca during a virtual press conference. Europe’s big ...