Tenuta di Trinoro

2010 at Trinoro was a year of heavy rains and lots of snow during the winter; spring was late, with rains covering a large part of May; the vineyards immediately showed fatigue, flowering unevenly in the middle of June. This process they continued with late settings and with irregular, slow turning of color in the berries during the month of August.

The year-in, year-out performance by vines during these more tropical years is well represented in their racing speed in years like 2009, followed by their fatigue in 2010. We couldn’t totally ripen the later-harvest grapes of cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot, but the fair weather after long waiting let us pick good merlots in the middle of October and very good cabernet francs from October 25th-30th; both are showing an unusual freshness, clarity and fruit, which is becoming a constant feature of the wines of Trinoro.

We did some bleeding on some of the vats; otherwise simple winemaking was conducted by transferring wines off the skins as soon as fermentations were complete into new barriques chosen from those made with well aged and lightly toasted wood, for 7 months, then was racked into vats of concrete. 2010 is a bright, profound vintage with intriguing, complex red fruit. These wines should age beautifully.

Vineyard age: 20 years

Vineyard density: 10,000 vines/Ha

Vineyard altitude: 450-600 m asl

Yield per hectare: 18 Hl/Ha

Fertilization: None

Spraying: Clay, propolis, grapefruit seed extract

Vinification: Pickings of Merlot where on September 27th, 28th, 30th and October 1st; of Cabernet Franc on October 5th, 9th, 13th and 20th; of Petit Verdot on October 27th; of Cabernet Sauvignon on October 21st and November 1st

Aging: 8 months in new French oak barriques, 10 months in cement vats

Bottling: March 2011

Production: 8,400 bottles