Ognissanti Troy red blend NV, Northern Italy
A unique bouquet with aromas of wild berries and bitter chocolate, black currant, boot polish and leather, there’s a rustic deep-seated core of old-world charm, dried herb and a savoury core. Then some oak and heavy lees suggestions. A very dark coloured wine with a core of purple and ruby then a pink & purple rim and a noticeable colour staining of the tears. On the palate - flavours of dark chocolate and black berry, dried raisin and blue fruits. Unmissable display of tannins and equally intense acidity. A very interesting wine - feels classic, tastes very different from many other red wines I have tried. It has the concentration of a young Cabernet lead blend with the emphasis on Petit Verdot, the tannins of a Barbaresco and ripe fleshy intensity of a young Shiraz. Youthful, will age well with best drinking from 2022 through 2030+.
92 Points
Premium
I received two sample of this wine several weeks ago - and with wine that comes from overseas I like to let it rest for a while before opening. The notes below are from the producer:
Hi Cameron,
it is a crazy period. I am lucky as in the area where I am working we are not affected by the COVID, but we are in a crazy situation as we are spending more time following directives from NSW health than anything else.This video will give you a good idea of the area https://youtu.be/U8I5A7FmD9E
We bought few hectares of abandoned vineyard in 2015, which were abandoned for over 10 years and with vines older than 80 years. We are in the Pinerolese DOC, in particular the Ramie DOC which can be produced produced only in Perosa Argentina and Pomaretto. The legislation of Ramie we need to have Avana (minimun 30%), Avarengo (minimum 15%), and Neretto di Bairo (minimum 20%) with the remaining of indigenous Piemontese grapes. The other grapes we have in the vineyards in both Perosa and Pomaretto are berla d’la crava (Persan), beuna nera, lambrusca nera, Mogissan and montanera. In the vineyards on the slopes of Pomaretto we also have Pelaverga, Neiret, Brunetta, Talassa, Corvia Rossa, Perveiral Nero, Vernaccia Nera and Brunetta. With my young stupidity, in a piece of vineyard I bought in Perosa where the vines were taken out few years earlier , I planted Barbera which will be 4 years old in 2020 but we are not using yet for the wine. The vineyards are scattered in two very different terroirs: -in Perosa Argentina we are have moraine (probably terminal moraine with a fair bit of granite in there),
facing south, south east with an altitude of around 750 mt. Here we have everything co-planted, and we also have few traditional white vines (blanc vert, bianchetto, perveiral Bianco, Bianco di valdigna, Chasellass, lignenga, malvasia, moscatello e moscatellone e il bolano) which we are experimenting with with very particular results. -in Pomaretto we have schist, hard rock and very high temperature excursion between the day and the night. Slopes are prohibitive, (90%) and we have several parcels with south, south west and south east exposure. Dry walls, manual management and harvest and a monorail to help us. I will send you some picture cause it is crazy how over time they have managed to work around the area. We began working the vineyard in January 2015 and found that the vineyard did not have diseases and
Because of the exposure and the constant breeze we could spray very little, so we decided not to spray anything to animals and diseases. We lost almost everything in 2016 and in 2017 we began fencing the parcels and using bordeaux mixture. 2018 we were able to bring in few tons of grapes. It is the first year we have commercialized the wine and 2018 was a cold and rainy, and since we decide not to use anything apart from bordeaux mixture (we are trying to spraying less than 2 kg per hectare per year) it was very difficult to bring healthy grapes in the cellar. We don’t use anything in the cellar, minimal So2 in the 2018 but on 2019 we did not use it so far, and if we can we will avoid (2018 total So2 is below 30, volatile below 10). The 2018 only did stainless steel but we are experimenting with old large wood (we have little production, this is not very easy), concrete and also a anphora. The biggest project we are doing now is trying to give an identity to some of those grapes individually, particularly the berla d crava (persan). The only other person making this wine commercially (around 2000 bottles per year) is Daniele Countadin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8I5A7FmD9E&feature=youtu.be