di Marzo. Greco di Tufo Riserva 'Vigna Ortale'

Greco di Tufo DOCG Riserva
Grape: Greco

Lemon, quinine and orange peel, salt, and pineapple. A serious, genius of a wine which seems to float just above this earth.  13.5%

Cantine di Marzo producer page

There is a wistful, ethereal quality to the wines from Ortale, a small vineyard facing south-southwest.  The soils are sparse clays, broken by limestone and sulphur stones, with old woodland for a neighbour.  The vines were planted in 2008 and 2012 using a Guyot* training system, at an unfashionably spacious 3000 vines per hectare, yielding a respectable 70hl/ha.  The grapes are harvested by hand in the middle of October, these are amongst the last of the white grapes to be picked in Italy.  The crop is de-stemmed before a gentle pressing, only the free-run juice is used.  Fermentation is in temperature-controlled steel tanks with selected yeasts.  The wine remains on the lees* for 9 months, during this period the wine goes through a malolactic conversion*.  The wine is lightly filtered before bottling, it is then stored in ancient underground cellars for at least a year.

Ortale has the highest content of volcanic rock.  In Ferrante’s opinion, Ortale is ‘the dreamer’, a wine with an ethereal quality.

Archive
2019:  An intense, finely textured, bone dry white, that hints at tropical fruit, white peach and hay. This Ortale has such energy, crazy good wine.  13.5%