Colli Orientali del Friuli DOC
Grape: Cabernet Franc

Pure mint and bramble on the nose. Vibrant, full and sapid with sweet, open brambly fruit, a touch of anise and cinnamon, ripe mature tannins, rich and long.
Production: 3000 bottles

Producer: Broilo

Cabernet Franc plays second fiddle in Bordeaux and takes star billing in the Loire where it is famously bottled as a single varietal wine. In Italy it is harder to find, most of the plantings are in the northeast and it is gaining popularity in Toscana. It may have been held back by a reputation for thin, green wines and much of the blame for this should be laid at the feet of less quality-orientated Loire producers, for when this vine is treated like a great variety, it performs like a great variety.
These vines are thirty years old and trained using a double Guyot system on a southeast facing slope. Plantings were at four thousand vines per hectare and the yield is around forty hectolitres per hectare. The grapes are picked by hand in October, sorted, crushed and undergo a wild yeast fermentation in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks that last around two weeks. A wine that spends twenty-two months in old tonneaux, during this period the wine goes through a full malolactic conversion.