Since I was out, after recovering from pneumonia, I stopped by The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan to pick up the Wine Club selections as well as to enjoy a wine tasting that they were holding. 

The first wine that we tasted was Villa Giada Gavi DOCG 2021 by Andrea Faccio.  The Villa Giada winery was founded in the early 18^th century and has grown and expanded in the Piedmont region and originally growing Moscato vines.  The  oldest part of the cellar dates to 1790 and the first bottles of wine were produced in 1934.  The land has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where the Langhe meets Monferrato.  This wine is from the Gavi region, where the soil consists of calcareous marl and is entirely made from the Cortese varietal.  The fruit is manually harvest, destemmed and pressed and fermentation occurs in temperature-controlled Stainless-Steel tanks with constant contact with native yeasts for a few months.  The wine is a light straw yellow color and offers notes of white fruits, white flowers, herbs and almonds.  On the palate a nice dry wine offering tones of green apples, honeydew, citrus and spices with bright acidity and a medium count finish of terroir and almonds.

The second wine that we had was Azienda Agricola Ottella Lugano DOC 2022, and the Lugano region straddles Lombardy and Veneto, but is considered part of Lombardy.  The grape for Lugano is known as Turbiana, Verdicchio and as Trebbiano di Lugano. The Montresor family has been running Ottella for four generations and it has been attested that the Montresor family were the only ones to produce Lugano in the province of Verona in 1905.  In 1964, the family began delineating the land and they began working to get a DOC designation.  The fruit is manually harvested and undergoes slow fermentation in temperature-controlled Stainless-Steel tanks for five months.   The wine is a straw-yellow color and offers notes of candied fruits, citrus, and minerals.  On the palate this dry wine offers tones of citrus, apples, tropical fruits, and lemon zest with a nice medium count finish of fruit and minerals.

The final chilled wine of the tasting was Podere Ciona Ciona Rosé Toscana IGT 2022.  I was reading the history of the winery on their website “Franca and Franco Gatteschi were looking for a place in the countryside to retire to, after many years of working in Italy and abroad, when they came across a small, beautiful, albeit run down property: 100 acres of land, mostly wooded with 10 acres set aside for cultivation, of which 2.5 acres already had vineyards; a house from the 18th Century, abandoned for more than 40 years; and, above all, a view without equal on the Chianti hills, with Siena in the distance.”  It really sounds idyllic and makes one ponder how this property was neglected and ignored for years.  “They purchased the estate at the beginning of 1990, and they immediately started the reconstruction work on the main house (it took nearly three years). They also set up a small but well-equipped wine cellar for making wine. In 1996 they permanently moved on the estate and the following year, the great 1997 vintage, saw the birth of the first “official” wine of Podere Ciona: A Chianti Classico DOCG Riserva.” The Rosé was made entirely of Sangiovese in the saignée method.  The vines are from six to nineteen years of age and planted on quartz, clay schist and marl.  The fruit is manually harvested in small baskets and then de-stemming, berry by berry for a slight crush in Stainless Steel vats for ten to twelve hours of skin contact and no Malolactic Fermentation. The wine is then aged for about six months in Stainless Steel and then further fined and bottle aged for six months before distribution. There were about one hundred-eighty cases produced of this wine.  A pretty salmon-pink color with notes of fruit and spices, just a well-balanced light and easy drinking wine with a nice medium count finish offering terroir.