The Veneto Renaissance Masterclass - Trade and Press
Masterclass: 'The Veneto Renaissance'
Tuesday 12th September 2017 - 3pm to 5pm
Ely Wine Bar, Ely Place, Dublin 2
Trade & Press only, places limited
Veneto Renaissance with Francesco Maule, Filippo Filippi & Dario Poddana
The Veneto is more often associated as a reliable, if slightly unexciting source of oceans of quaffable Prosecco, Pinot Grigio, Soave and Valpolicella that are must-lists in most restaurants. Producers of more terroir-expressive wines work quietly in the background of the fine wine scene in Italy, with Piedmont and Tuscany taking the glamour of being primarily fine wine producing regions. However this perception is slowly changing by the superb wines produced by growers like Filippi, Maule, and Terre di Pietra.
This masterclass will explore the wines of these growers and will offer interesting insights into volcanic wines from Soave and Gambellara.
La Biancara, in Gambellara was founded by Angiolino Maule and his wife Rosamaria at the end of the 1980s as an expression of their vision that wine should be a faithful expression of the land.
In their philosophy, terroir and vines are central - chemical interventions in the vineyard and cantina are neither needed nor welcome. They work with nature’s cycles and the land itself, acting as facilitators of the vintage, neither correcting, adding, nor subtracting in order to produce a healthful and digestible wine.
Angiolino Maule's life’s work has been to try to understand the possibilities of making the best possible wines in a ‘natural’, minimally interventionist way and in 2006, he founded VinNatur http://www.vinnatur.org as an association to help the exchange of knowledge and information between like-minded producers. There are now 170 small growers across 9 countries who are members, all exchewing the use of chemical additions or manipulations and who strive to defend the integrity of their land and patrimony, respecting the history, culture and art that has been passed down from previous generations, drawing inspiration from a strong ecological ethos. http://www.angiolinomaule.com/vinnatur/
Often dubbed ‘the godfather of natural wine in Italy’, it is impossible to overstate the importance of Angiolino Maule’s place in developing the ethos of minimal intervention wines in Italy.
Filippo Filippi is the owner and winemaker at his eponymous estate in Soave, and we are privileged to have him come in for a flying visit to do this masterclass, especially in the middle of the harvest season. Filippi’s vineyards are situated at the very highest points in the Soave appellation on mainly volcanic soils. His wines are considered among the top Soave and are in a style very much of their own which doesnt try to fit the DOC mold. Linear, mineral, smoky wines that are a faithful expression of their volcanic terroir. They can need time to open up, becoming textured and mouth filling with air and/or bottle age.
Dario Poddana is Italian Wine Buyer for Les Caves de Pyrene and has an incredible breadth and depth of knowledge about Italian wines and the natural wine world. He will introduce the wonderful colfóndo Proseccos of Casa Belfi di Albino Armani and Maurizio Donadi as well as the Valpolicellae of Terra di Pietra.
This promises to be a fascinating tasting and not to be missed - be sure to reserve your spot early.