VIDEO CHAPTER INDEX:
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00:00 – INTRO TO CORVINA
00:42 – HOW SERGIO ZENATO CHANGED THE WORLD
01:45 – WHAT IS APPASSIMENTO WINEMAKING?
02:55 – WHAT GRAPES ARE IN THE ZENATO VENETO ROSSO?
03:26 – VENETO’S ROYAL FAMILY OF WINE GRAPES
03:38 – HOW WAS THE ZENATO ROSSO MADE?
04:00 – WHAT DOES THE ZENATO ROSSO TASTE LIKE?
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Zenato’s Rosso Veneto 2017 is a superb opportunity to study some of the weirder elements to Italian wine. For starters, the wine is a partial appassimento affair, which gives us ample opportunity to explore how this changes both the fermentation dynamics, and the final wine.
The blend is also built largely around the somewhat unusual cultivar of Corvina, so we spent some time discussing what make the grape unusual, and how – while it’s mostly true that “two wrongs don’t make a right”, the combination of Corvina and Appassimento winemaking actually work quite well together.
Of course, if you have yet to sign up for your Monthly HanDrinksSolo Wine Subscription then you won’t be able to taste what we’re talking about when we unpack the various facets to this wine, so to try and dull the FOMO, I have left some tasting notes and a few technical specs:
TASTING NOTES
👃🏼 An initially shy nose of berries and spice opens up quite nicely into a mix of strawberries, jammy mulberries, white pepper, and some dried mediterranean herbs.
👄 The palate is fairly soft on entry, with the aforementioned sweeter strawberry candy and mulberry, but there are also some fine tannins, and rather juicy berry acidity that provice just enough structure to keep it upright. The white pepper returns on the finish to keep things interesting.
TECHNICAL SPECS
Veneto IGT. 60% Corvina; 10% Rondinella; 5% Corvinone; and 25% mixed component of Merlot and Cabernet.
85% of the wine was tank fermented and matured, with 15% being matured in larger format oak foudres.
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foreign did you know that Corvina is a little bit of an odd duck as far as wine grapes go because it has thick skins but low color intensity and really high acid now this combination seems to work quite well in warmer climates which is why even outside of Italy Corvina is really gaining popularity in regions like Australia and Argentina in the new world and you might say is there a point to harvest why all this talk of Corvina well mostly because today’s hand drinks solo wine info video focuses on zenato’s roster venator which is a red blend built around the cultivar of Corvina and put together in the cellar by winemaker Alberto zanato Sonata is a family owned estate that was founded in the 1960s by their local Legend Sergio zanato now he became something of a hero in his hometown of lugana which is on the Southern Shores of Lake Garda mostly because of his pioneering work making really Fine Wines out of what was then a relatively obscure local indigenous cultivar called trebiano de lugana or turbiana now through his work with this grape he pretty much single-handedly achieved doc status for lugana and in doing so reinvented the local wine industry since then Sergio’s children Alberto and Nadia have taken over and today they produce about 2 million bottles per vintage SO despite being family owned they are by no means teensy weensy having said that they do only have about 70 hectares under vine on the actual estate and so they have to Source fruit from other regions around Veneto most notably from Val policella and it’s from this region that the amaroni superiori and other apasamento wines are made when making a pasamento wines a portion of the grapes are set aside and dried until they’ve lost about 30 percent of their Mass they are then tossed into the fermentation vat along with all the other already fermenting grapes now you have to remember these dried out little suckers have not lost any of their color they’ve lost none of their sugar and none of their acid in fact all they really have lost is water so adding these concentrated raisin grapes into the fermentation back is going to add an epic boost on all fronts it’s like giving a toddler a six pack of Red Bull and a can of paint and then locking them in a Cupboard with your mother-in-law the end result is bound to be intense what you see in these cases is a huge boost of color but there’s also a boost of sugar now some of that sugar is converted into alcohol so you get a boost of alcohol as well the end result is these rich rather concentrated heavy wines that not only have Rich color and higher alcohol but also these amazing ripe velvety fruit elements of course if you try to perform this trick with the cultivar like Cabernet so you know it would seem like pure Madness but with Corvina and its lower color intensity it really does seem to be served quite well by this boost Sonata produced around 50 000 bottles of the Rosso Veneto each year and to give you local scale that’s only about 15 more than Canon cup produced of their Paul sour blend the blend is made up of 60 Corvina along with a 25 component of already mixed Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and then they are splashes of rondanilla and called venoni and it’s these last two that are particularly important to Corvina for their ability to add more color in fact if you look at the cultivars of Corvina corvinoni rondinella and Molinari they are about as inextricably Linked In Veneto as you’d find with Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot and Cabernet Franc in Bordeaux now when it comes to the apostamento portion in this particular wine it really is quite mild it’s only about 20 percent of the Corvina grapes that are dried prior to fermentation and when you taste this one you’ll see that it doesn’t quite have the same power that you might find from a Vel policella doc superiori or an amaroni de la Valpolicella docg these wines really are quite formidable well when we give this guy a sniff we get a fairly Pleasant nose that seems to blend elements of berries and spice on the fruit side of things we get elements like blackberries strawberries and even Jammy Mulberry notes there’s also a touch of Raisin which I guess kind of makes sense in that a portion of this wine is made with actual raisins but then alongside the fruit notes we also have more Savory slightly more interesting elements of leather and white pepper and dried Mediterranean herbs then when we take a sip we find that keeping in balance with the nose the palate is fairly moderate in weight it has a soft entry and there’s quite a lot of sort of candied fruit sweetness but then coming around those fruit elements there is also some rather lovely Berry acidity that white pepper spice that we smelt on the nose and also some fairly fine tendons and the beauty of the combination of the tannins and the spice and that Berry acidity is that it kind of couches those sweeter softer fruit elements and makes sure that no one ends up presenting as too flabby and if you want to tease apart those fruit components in the middle a little more well we definitely have some strawberry candy and we’ve already talked about those Jammy Mulberry notes but there’s also some really Pleasant blackberry and so that combination of perhaps blackberry and the white pepper you’d be forgiven for thinking that this could be a lighter styled South African Shiraz so that’s all we have time for today but if you have any questions about the opacimento process or about Sonata then leave a comment on the website and I will try and get back to you and if you enjoyed today’s video then support us on patreon And subscribe to the YouTube YouTube hand drink Solo Channel where we published at least six videos each month talking about things like wine science wine history unusual cultivars and some of the rising wine making stars that are coming out of the unique South African wilderness [Music] thank you [Music]