Description
Our first wine is Vicoletto is a straw yellow, bright but slightly turbid in colour thanks to the natural approach to winemaking, with no stabilisation, fining or filtration which results in a wine with very low sulphur levels. The bouquet is a wonderful mix of citrus, grapefruit, apple and white flesh fruits that all but mask the hint of elderberry and pleasant notes of Mediterranean flora.
The Cataratto grapes are grown in sandy soils in Patti Piccolo- Alcamo. They use a vertical trellis system training with low guyot pruning. Night harvested when the grapes are cool to retain acidity and freshness.
Working organically, the Vesco family focus on creating fragrant crisp Catarratto and perfumed fresh Nero d’Avola from their hillside vineyards. These vineyards are certified organic and are nestled high up in the hills south of Alcamo to take advantage of the slightly cooler temperatures and greater diurnal differences. The vines look down on the town of Marsala where, when the grapes have been harvested, they are taken. Here Andrea Vesco treats them with respect, utilising modern technology to ensure the freshness is retained for the final wines and creating elegant examples of the varieties that are anything but what you would expect from such a hot land.
The second wine is Oskar Maurer’s Kovidinka, an easygoing, crisp, juicy orange wine, packed with fresh stone-fruit, hints of orange pill paired with delicate herbal notes and refreshing acidity is all you need to get the party going.
Oskar Maurer is based in Szerèmsèg, Serbia. This, his entry level wine, is from the variety Kovidinka grown on Sand, Volcanic bedrock, Alluvial limestone and Clay soils. He releases only 7000 bottles, which for a wine with a following like this is not much.
The grapes are grown on old bush-wines resulting in a very low yield. They are hand harvested and de-stemmed soaked for 7 days to extract just the right amount of colour. Later, the juice ferments and ages in 350l old Hungarian oak barrels. The wine gets bottled unfined, unfiltered with a tiny addition of sulphur just before bottling.
Two wines that work well as a pair and a great introduction to the world of Orange, skin contact wines.
