Malibran Prosecco Di Conegliano – Valdobbiadene

Loris Follador, making one of the best Prosecco Colfondo (on the sediments), explains his vineyards and winemaking in the Prosecco region of Valdobiaddene-Conigliano.

Transcript:

Before coming here you were at the southern border of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene area
In this direction 15 km from here is the town Valdobbiadene.
And in this this direction 6 km from here is the town Conegiano.
Here on this land we produce Cardamaro.
which is a bit to the north from us and it is colder.
Here we have planted only Glera
Cultivated using the Sylvoz system
which is a horizontal cordon training system
with two canes with fruit, two "arches" as we say here
which grow every year.
It is important that
we can have vines that grow in this way
as there is a clear difference where the plant grows leaves and where fruit is produced.
Now we have just trimmed, so it is light.
But in general Glera is a vine
that can have too high yields,
particularly in the end of harvest.
So our training system allows us to have
very concentrated in flavour grapes here below
Air circulates more freely here
and also we can have the grapes
spread like this.
So that even if it is one bunch of grapes,
there is air around the grapes.
So this is just another way
to avoid the possibility of disease
because for us it is very important
to have healthy grapes.
Our area is characterized by our specially heavy soil
Digging down it becomes
clay soil.
The soil allows us to grow our grapes.
From the grapes we have our wine
with this kind of body and structure.
We manage to produce wine 100% Glera
but already the first harvest
has a lot of body structure.
Our first harvest is in these baskets, 1m x 1m x 80 cm.
We made this press
in this press we put entire grapes, and we do not use any other equipment at this stage
to preserve the aromas that the grapes developed in the vineyard.
Second important point: we do not crush the stems
Other sparkling wines sometimes have these green notes
these notes are coming from crushing the stems
and these stems give green notes.
In fact it was Conegliano Valdobbiadene that gave basis to the whole Prosecco movement.
In 2009 when the DOCG was created
all the rest of Friuli and Veneto regions became DOC.
And so we had to work within this framework
that was new for us.
With this change came a lot of controls of what exactly should be in the glass
in means the wine was analyzed rigorously,
while before we just served wine.
We continued to make Col Fondo method of Prosecco, as it was in our identity.
We also started with Extra Dry.
Then following in fact my passion we also started
to concentrate on the drier wines.
Then Cardamaro we started to produce in 2012, no added sulfites.
It was related to the fact that Col Fondo method produces low quantity of sulfites.
We wanted to see
up to which point do we manage to arrive without adding sulfites. And so a very interesting product was brought to life.
We wanted to make a more rich Col Fondo wine.
A wine to match with food, more fresh also. So we produced this wine
completely no added sulfites, also during the vinification.
We are talking here almost up to the point of oxidation
but using this word in a positive, not negative way.
And so the fermentation happens. It is faster.
And so it is exactly why the wine is called Col Fondo, as here is the yeast that started the fermentation
remain here deposited in the bottle so it is not stopped and becomes Metodo Classico fermentation in the bottle
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