Terrevive, “No Autoclave”  Rosato Frizzante
Terrevive, “No Autoclave”  Rosato Frizzante

Terrevive, “No Autoclave” Rosato Frizzante

Emilia-Romagna, Italy 2020 (750mL)
Regular price$38.00
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Terrevive, “No Autoclave” Rosato Frizzante

You couldn’t ask for a better case study on the power of natural wine than Terrevive. This is an estate devoted to biodynamically farmed Lambrusco vinified in the ancestral method, which is the opposite of what many people think of when they think of Lambrusco (a wine whose most popular incarnations a generation ago were engineered to taste like soda). Terrevive’s Gianluca Bergianti isn’t the only Lambrusco-maker to revive ancient winemaking traditions and embrace sustainable farming, but he is surely one of the most fanatically devoted: 


His farm in Gargallo di Carpi, near Modena, is a true polyculture, with vineyards interspersed with cereal grains, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other crops. “No Autoclave” is Bergianti’s blunt rejection of the charmat, or “tank,” method, which still defines most Lambrusco production today. All he does to this wine is add unfermented grape must to it and seal it up, allowing the second fermentation to finish in the bottle. What you get when you pop the cork is an unadulterated, bone-dry, lightly effervescent rosato that fits in perfectly among the assorted “pét-nats” and other easy-drinking sparklers currently taking the wine world by storm. “No Autoclave” is perfectly on-trend and totally uncompromising at the same time, but most important is how vivid, delicious, and alive it is. You need to try it!


All the terminology around sparkling wines these days may be causing some confusion: Whether you call it pétillant-naturel, méthode ancestrale, or, as Bergianti does, rifermentato in bottiglia (re-fermented in bottle), what you’re getting is a wine that speaks to the pre-technology days of winemaking. Before the creation of the “Champagne method,” and later, the “tank method,” wine often became sparkling simply by being bottled and corked before its fermentation had completed (leaving residual CO2 in the bottle). Variations on this “ancestral” method have roared back into fashion lately, whether it’s an unfinished wine going into the bottle or a finished one to which some unfermented must has been added (as in this case). 


Italy, like France, has a long history of producing frizzante (semi-sparkling), from Prosecco col fondo to Lambrusco to Moscato d’Asti. Looking at Lambrusco specifically, the production of wines using the Charmat method—wherein a secondary fermentation is carried out inside a large, pressurized vat, using selected yeasts and, in some cases, added sugars—was essentially a modern way of emulating the old style at scale. With “No Autoclave” and his other Lambrusco bottlings, Bergianti is obviously gunning for something more spontaneous, unadulterated, and unmanipulated. This notion of letting the wine become what it becomes, rather than intervene along the way with yeast selections, filtering/yeast disgorgement, or sugar adjustments at bottling (the famous dosages in Champagne), has lots of appeal: When it works, and the wine isn’t riddled with flaws, you’re treated to a primal, transparent, raw-versus-cooked wine experience.


The 2020 “No Autoclave” comes from a field blend of different Lambrusco sub-varieties, co-fermented in concrete eggs using ambient yeasts. Unfermented must is later added to a finished, dry wine and the wine is bottled and sealed, during which a secondary fermentation creates the light effervescence you see when the wine is poured. In the glass, it’s a light rosy red moving to a pink/magenta rim—way lighter in color than most Lambrusco you encounter—with perfumed aromas of red cherry, blood orange, violets, pomegranate, wild herbs, pink peppercorns, and a touch of bread dough. It is racy, bone-dry, and taut, pulling at the insides of your cheeks and demanding you get in the kitchen and start cooking (in fact, you could easily find yourself draining the better part of a bottle before your prep is even finished). Pour it into large all-purpose stems at about 50 degrees and you’ve got a spicy partner for homemade pizza, pasta dusted with grated bottarga (dried roe), and so much more. Modena, where this wine is from, is one of Italy’s great food meccas, situated along the same stretch of the Pò River plain as Reggio Emilia (home of parmigiana), Parma, and Bologna. If you want to create the Platonic ideal for this wine, make your own cotechino and serve it over lentils, topped with balsamic vinegar. One word sums it up: Wow!

Terrevive, “No Autoclave”  Rosato Frizzante
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Italy

Northwestern Italy

Piedmont

Italy’s Piedmont region is really a wine “nation”unto itself, producing world-class renditions of every type of wine imaginable: red, white, sparkling, sweet...you name it! However, many wine lovers fixate on the region’s most famous appellations—Barolo and Barbaresco—and the inimitable native red that powers these wines:Nebbiolo.

Tuscany

Chianti

The area known as “Chianti” covers a major chunk of Central Tuscany, from Pisa to Florence to Siena to Arezzo—and beyond. Any wine with “Chianti” in its name is going to contain somewhere between 70% to 100% Sangiovese, and there are eight geographically specific sub-regions under the broader Chianti umbrella.

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