Italian Bubbles North & South
Travel broadens our perspectives... Suddenly, the palette with which we paint the story of our lives has more colors. - Rick Steves
This sums up almost everything I love about travel, and one of the real joys of being a wine importer. It is one of the truly great pleasures in life to discover something new, expand your perspective, see the world with more color, and see a country in a less homogenous way.
Take Italy. It's easy to make generalizations - a common language, rich history, pasta!, Roman architecture, great art. But for much of the last 1500 years, Italy was a collection of warring city-states and small principalities, and you can still hear the dialect differences when traveling from north to south, as much as you can pick up in the differences in food.
The beauty and the fun of moving around a country like Italy is the diversity. One day, you can be in the Dolomites, hearing the Tirol-inflected speech, skiing Olympic tracks, warming up afterwards with canederli, and sipping on delicate and vibrant high-altitude chardonnay. Next, you could be on the sun- drenched coast, at the base of Mt. Etna, eating Spaghetti alla Siracusana with a glass of aromatic, fruity Nero d'Avola.
Of course, Italians, both in the north and south, have a passion for eating in particular and living well in general. So while the flavors and the scenery may change, the destination always seems to be the table, surrounded by family or friends. Here, you don't have to choose between regions; just make a little space on the table.
Today, we're bringing out two diverse flavors of Italy with two distinctive Sparkling wines to help you live well, like the Italians, and paint your world with more color. Now, this is my kind of travel.
The flagship sparkling in the Corvée lineup. 100% Chardonnay grown at 550m in the terraced slopes of the Cembra Valley, and aged over 3 years on lees before disgorgement. This could easily fool the consummate Champagne drinker, but the verve and clarity of this wine could only come from mountain-grown fruit. A pure delight of freshness and subtle complexity that finishes dry and leaving you wanting more.
• Cantine Pupillo Podere 27 Rosato Brut Nature •
Another fantastic example of a winemaker painting with more colors; a sparkling wine made from Nero d'Avola. The result is a joyful expression of fruit and effervescence, wrapped up in a delicate shade of pink. Bright, gently foamy, and loaded with pink grapefruit, cherry, and white pepper elements. Perfect for antipasti or simply sipping on a sunny afternoon - it is really so dang good.
These two sparkling wines are just tremendous, and either one will sit beautifully on the table with a meal or as an aperitivo. But why choose? Grab both!