Nosiola Foradori 2013: the amphorae and the long maceration

Women in wine are growing in number and importance. I won't mention other names so as not to upset anyone, especially Elisabetta Foradori, about whom I'll tell you today – she would deserve far more words than I'll manage to dedicate to her.

I was at Vinitaly, in the area dedicated to ViViT, when someone – interrupting a tasting, in the presence of some remarkable wines produced according to specific criteria – asked for a Solaris; the reaction of the person running the stand was polite, firm but elegant: "We don't carry Solaris and I hope no one in this room has any; it's an artificial grape variety." Foradori, we like her.

To help you understand Elisabetta's thinking, I'll quote what she writes on her website: "The pomegranate is my favourite fruit: it is a spontaneous mosaic, tannic and full of such different things, that it cannot help but be connected to the vine and to life." Diversity, variety, the vine, life, and nature.

To show you her essence, I'll talk about her wines, her work, her ingenuity.

Her estate follows the principles of biodynamics and has been certified Demeter and ICEA since 2009. I am about to taste the Nosiola 2013.

Nosiola is a Trentino grape variety that gives life to wines that are delicate aromatically yet at the same time complex and long-lived. Elisabetta leaves it to macerate on the skins for 8 months; for this wine she uses amphorae, which allow oxygenation through their pores without contaminating the wine.

Light straw in colour, slightly hazy as it is unfiltered – it needs some time to breathe. If you are patient, you will be able to detect sealing wax, hazelnut, almond, wildflowers, apple… Delicate, warm, savoury and very persistent; in my opinion, a wine that promises to be long-lived.

I would recommend serving it at around 15°C so as not to "overwhelm" it and compromise the great, excellent work that lies behind it.

I confess, however, that I had approached the stand for a gem I had spotted: Pinot Grigio 2014; no label, white writing on the bottle – I would market it exactly like that… simple, essential, natural. This wine also macerates on the skins and is left in amphora; a little is in some bottles, the rest is still macerating!

The colour is a soft pink; the wine is very warm and persistent… we'll talk about it next year, when, perhaps, it will be on the market.

"Knowledge of the rhythms and cycles of nature has been perfected through observation: every season brings us new things, every day teaches and helps us understand. We have learned to listen closely to grasp the subtle differences that exist in nature, and to preserve the sincerity of the grape's character in the expression of its place of origin. Our agricultural gestures thus rise to the level of creativity: we have the task and the privilege of getting up every morning and being free to work in harmony with the message the land wishes to give us at that moment."