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Wine Description
The Story
Our Chardonnay is a top quality wine with great character traits. The wine originates from a mini-plot on the best slope and is produced only in very small amounts. The absolute attention to detail and meticulous screening and selection make this Chardonnay extremely distinctive. Proximity to the sea and the cool nights lend this wine its uniqueness and a suggestion of finesse worthy of a Burgundy.
Monteverro Chardonnay is bursting with sweet aromas of pear, honey, vanilla, apricot, and white chocolate. It is balanced by mild notes of white truffles and roasted nuts. The first sips are fresh revealing enticing stone fruit and citrus flavors of white peach and blood orange; the wine quickly evolves to showcase a complex white with excellent minerality and a lingering finish with hints of candied orange peel and marzipan. The wine undergoes 100% malolactic fermentation on fine lees and is then aged in 30% new French oak barrels and 70% egg-shaped concrete tanks for 14 months.
Blend: 100% Chardonnay
Denomination: IGT Toscana Chardonnay (Maremma, Tuscany)
Soil: Clay and limestone
Plantation: 7,575 vines/ha oriented east/west
Harvest: Handpicked and harvest date adapted to each section of the Chardonnay parcels
Winemaking: Each lot fermented separately Whole cluster pressing Natural fermentations Aging on fine lees 100% gravity
Aging: 50% spent 14 months in French oak barrels with 40% new oak, the remaining 50% aged in concrete eggs
Bottling: No fining, light filtration
Wine Information
A very exceptional event occurred in November 2012, with more than 400 mm of rain in 48 hours. This kind of event cannot refill the water reserve because most of it has no time to penetrate the soil, but it explains how tough the climate can be in the Mediterranean area with long periods of dryness and terrific storms. Fortunately, it did not cause damage in the vineyard, the soils were correctly covered with crops and porous enough to limit the erosion.
The picture would be incomplete without mentioning a total winter precipitation of 1200 mm until bud break, so finally we can say all water reserves were refilled before the growing season. The rest of the season was much more restful, with only 150 mm from April to October. We had a very even bud break (first half of April) and flowering (second half of May) but quite a small amount of grapes. This can be explained by the last 2 seasons of intense dryness. Therefore, the most natural way for the plant to react is to produce less grapes. The summer arrived slowly and we had just
10 days of intense warmth at the beginning of August, so the veraison occurred in optimal conditions. The harvest of the Chardonnay lasted from the 16th to 20th of August.
