Winemaker Notes
The southern part of Italy’s northeastern Alpine region, Trentino, produces quality wines from international varieties. But its most exceptional native variety, Teroldego, with plantings concentrated around the sandy, gravelly, limestone soils of its Campo Rotaliano district, makes a deep purple-hued red wine with scents and flavors of wild blackberry, herbs, espresso and cocoa.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”