Tenuta Carretta Airali Alta Langa Brut Vendemmia Metodo Classico 2018
Piemonte Bubbles...Ciao, Ciao Champagne...At 50% Off?!
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Why We Love It...
That’s one of the best parts about the wine industry… if you keep trying, you’ll find something you never knew existed, and you’ll be both blown away with sheer joy and angry that you didn’t discover it sooner. If you were to mention sparkling wine from Northern Italy to me a year ago, I would have immediately thought of Prosecco… and I would be hesitant. Now, there’s some great Prosecco in the world, and we’ve shared some here, but let’s be honest… most of it is cheaply fashioned, cloyingly sweet, and overall… disappointing. Before I tasted this for the first time, I feared the worst. Instead? What a revelation!
Tenuta Carretta is historic. Truly. Like 550 years of winemaking historic. This winery predates Christopher Columbus, with records placing its founding to the year 1467. The estate is set in rolling hills of Piobesi d’Alba, Roero, just north of the City of Alba and on the left bank of the Tanaro River. Named for the Piobese noblewoman Domina Carretta who first owned the estate, Tenuta Carretta makes mostly red, still wines – only recently branching out into the world of Italian spumantes.
The estate-grown grapes hail from their Airali vineyard high up in the Alta Langa, from a region only recently used for grape production – and more famously known for the hazelnut forests that provide the world with Nutella (Alba is where the Nutella factory stands and the whole city smells of gloriously rich and gooey Nutella). Researchers began experimenting with pinot noir and chardonnay in the 1990s, with great results. This is made entirely from pinot noir, and receives the rare “millesimato” designation – meaning that all the fruit stems from a single vintage, in this case the 2018 harvest. The wine spends a minimum of 3 years on the lees, à la Champagne, and the final dosage is a paltry 4 g/l … qualifying the wine as an extra brut, though labeled here as brut.
The aromas are wild, bright, and savory – from foraged berries, to earthy truffles, and aromatic herbs. The flavors too are intense and complex – ground cherries, alpine strawberries, blood orange, bread dough, saltwater taffy, dusty iron… precise, focused, and completely unique – this wine just has so much going on! This is a worthy Italian sparkler – even at the full retail of $50. At half that price today, this is something special indeed!
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Tenuta Carretta