News Alessandro Torcoli

Wine Harvest 2014: tell me the truth!

Wine Harvest 2014: tell me the truth!

Dear friends around the world, here I am again to update you on what is being talked about in Italy during this September scourged by rain (central and northern Italy) and with fairly normal weather in the south. Obviously there is a lot of talk about wine harvest 2014, which got under way in Franciacorta (Lombardy) in mid-August and is still in progress. I can tell you that it will be a difficult vintage. I don’t think it is right to call it an “awful” one because, in the thousand faces of Italian winemaking, there will certainly be places where decent, or even good, grapes are picked, like eastern Sicily, for example.

Also, it isn’t right to raise the alarm and to give the consumer a pessimistic message. The vinegrowers’ work is very hard and must be respected. It would be better to have a wine that is not particularly balanced, with uncertain aromas, in a lower tone in an unhappy year, rather than a soulless wine, stripped in the cellar of all faults or quality.

But I fear we’ll be tasting many paper-coloured white wines with weak aromas of fermentation. We have to accept the outcome of a mediocre year, possibly having to do without bottling an “ultra-premium” wine that would be impossible to make under these conditions. It is a question of sensitivity. It is important to be honest … or to paraphrase W. H. Auden …

O Tell me the truth about the vintage!

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