Placing a Bet on Nebbiolo in California

Apr 29, 2022
Placing a Bet on Nebbiolo in California

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Mr. Harvey’s Italian enterprise is solely completely different. It has its personal identify, Aeris, and except for the grapes grown in Sonoma, it has two vineyards on Mount Etna, the place it grows grapes and makes wines in affiliation with Salvo Foti, who has performed an important function within the revival of conventional Etna viticulture and wine manufacturing over the past 25 years.

Mr. Harvey has at all times been dedicated to nebbiolo, the nice grape primarily related to Barolo and Barbaresco, but it surely was his discovery of carricante that sealed the Aeris deal. As he tells it, he was in Italy along with his spouse 17 years in the past, when he stopped in a store filled with wines he had by no means tried earlier than. One was a 2001 Pietra Marina from Benanti, an Etna Bianco Superiore made by Mr. Foti solely of carricante.

“We drank it and it was revelatory,” Mr. Harvey stated as we walked the younger rows of Sonoma carricante. “It was like grand cru Burgundy meets grand cru Alsace riesling. That basically captivated me.”

He tracked down Mr. Foti and so they met.

“We talked about carricante,” Mr. Harvey recalled. “What blew my thoughts was how little there was, possibly 10 acres in 2010.

“There have been so few examples, and I puzzled, why not plant some carricante? Salvo had an incredible plan however couldn’t afford it. ‘Let’s speak,’ I stated.”

By 2016, Mr. Foti and Mr. Harvey had a 15-acre carricante winery in Milo on the east face of Etna, prime carricante territory.

“I hadn’t meant to personal a winery, however I didn’t do it to be rational,” Mr. Harvey stated.

Mr. Foti, whom Mr. Harvey referred to as “the excessive priest of indigenous grapes,” was additionally looking Etna for previous vineyards of nerello mascalese at excessive elevation. When he discovered largely deserted century-old vines at 2,000 to three,000 toes on the north face of Etna close to the city of Montelaguardia, Mr. Harvey stepped in. Aeris had one other Etna winery.

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