Tenuta di Trinoro

After a second consecutive rainless winter, in spring the vineyards started their efforts very slowly showing tiredness as if the plants hadn’t recovered from the heat of 2011 and were short of resources as they were going about developing their new canopy. There were thin shoots and scarce leafage. In June flowering happened evenly enough but slowly. It became clear that the plants would continue to hold back their energy as they traversed every stage of development; and that that would also avoid jumpiness and blocking.

The berries’ reddening happened evenly and very slowly; even the heat of August couldn’t inflict enough stress on the plants to block ripening, which became evident at the end of September when tests showed that though the sugars were unusually low, acidities had been falling rapidly and continuously. The minimum-effort approach by the vineyards ultimately made the ripening continue uninterrupted into mid and late October.

The musts from each parcel were black, light, flat and hard to tell apart. So were the wines as they ran off the skins after fermenting, dense and full of matter, but with little taste. I liked the low alcohol but it was hard to discern more than a seamless, smooth character in the wines then. At the end of February the wines started coming the rich growing body and, afterwards the flavors and the red fruit.