“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world.”

These words of Ernest Hemingway sum up the essence of our job and our passion.
And now we are in October, after a good harvest, our attention is entirely devoted to the work in the cellar … let’s go for the wine!
The must obtained from grapes crushed and not yet fermented, is now in the vats. It represents the first part of winemaking. A sweet juice, dense and opaque, that the fermentation process will turn into wine.
In the old country tradition, the must was obtained with a very particular pressing method; the crushing by toes. The farmers pressed the grapes directly into an open vat, the precious juice was then collected in a tank. Of course now the pressing is done by mechanical means and not manual … but I am convinced that customers would be curious to see it!
The fermentation, alcoholic and malolactic, is the second part of winemaking. This is a long journey during which the yeasts transform the sugars into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide, creating the wine. It is a very delicate phase in which we are engaged in frequent checks to ensure that everything goes in at the right time and with the right methods.
After fermentation the wine is ready to be cut. The cut is the moment when we choose, on the basis of the wines available in the cellar, the best tastes and the best flavors for our wine.
We can choose not to make the blend and preserve the integrity of the wine getting what is known as “pure wine”, a wine without cuts that reflects the predominant characteristics of the grape variety from which we got the grapes. Next step, the ageing. The ageing practice is to give more structure and more flavor to the wine.
The aging may be performed in different ways, the most common is with the help of barrels or casks. The wine is left in these wooden containers for a variable time depending on the wine and the degree of toasting of the wood. The wine obtained will be structured and full-bodied but also delicate and soft in the mouth.
Ageing can also be done in the bottle, highly respecting the characteristics of the wine and preserving the natural and original flavors. In our company we have adopted this ageing for ‘Intenso della Marronaia 2010”, as we wanted to enhance tradition and authenticity with a more natural course of ageing .