Casa Coste Piane Brichet Frizzante

Grapes: Glera + Verdiso

Region: Veneto, Italy

Vintage: 2021

Viticulture: Organic

Soils: Limestone

Vinification: Grapes are hand-harvested. The fruit is kept in whole clusters and pressed extremely gently; fermentation is spontaneous and slow in the cold cellar, with indigenous yeasts only. After around two weeks, the partially fermented juice is separate with a paper filter into wine and sweet must. The wine, sitll in separate parcels, goes into to tank with its lees for the winter, while the must is frozen; in the spring, the wine is bottled with some of its must, re-starting fermentation which goes to complete dryness. The bottles are not disgorged, so the wine has a cloudy appearance and some sediment in the bottle, like a true, old-fashioned col fondo Prosecco.

Aging: 6 months

Fining or Filtering: None

Sulfur: None

Notes from the Importer:  Loris Follador is from a long line of farmers in Valdobbiadene. Thanks to his father and grandfather, Loris and his two sons have never had to plant a vine. Their vineyards, featuring 60+ year old vines, are absurdly steep and the soil is very shallow, hitting solid limestone or sandstone rock in a few centimeters. The Folladors are well aware of this fortunate legacy and treat it with the reverence and respect it deserves. No herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers are used. It’s impossible to plow here, but it’s really not necessary with vines of this age; they’ve long ago found their sources deep within the stone formation below. The harvesting is, of course, by hand and would seem, especially in the steepest spots, near impossible. Most importantly, the focus on the vinification and the cellar work is to express, as simply and directly as possible, the potential minerality and the terroir of these vines.