Winemaker Notes
Giulio Ferrari Riserva del Fondatore is the Italian sparkling wine that has won most awards, both in its home country and abroad. It is a Trentodoc that has succeeded in meeting the challenge of time: it matures for over ten years on its lees, acquiring great complexity but without ever losing its balance, freshness, and elegance.
The 2008 vintage displays an incredible kaleidoscope of aromas, in which the fruity notes are particularly ingratiating. In the mouth, it amazes one with the stunning richness of its fruit and the delicacy of its bubbles, which caress and envelop the palate, underpinned by perfectly integrated acidity. It is a wine of substance, aristocratic and satisfying.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is a special wine that raises the bar very high for all Italian sparkling wines. The 2008 Trento Metodo Classico Extra Brut Giulio Ferrari Riserva del Fondatore (disgorged in 2020) walks a careful line between elegance and power. The wine ages on the lees for an outstanding 10 years and emerges with a silky texture and finely tuned aromas of apricot, Golden Delicious apple, honey, pie crust and crushed dolomitic quartz. This fine and elegant sparkler spreads evenly over the palate with fine beading and a creamy texture. The cool 2008 vintage is poised to take on more weight and intensity with time. Rating: 96+
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Wine Enthusiast
Bread-crust, honey and hazelnut aromas give way to ripe stone fruit and dried herb. The aromas carry over to the rich complex palate along with orange rind and dried pineapple. Fresh acidity keeps it youthful.
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Wine Spectator
A harmonious version, with a firm backbone of acidity finely meshed with the lacy mousse and detailed flavors of dried white cherry, toast point and chopped almond, showing rich hints of saffron, licorice and lemon marmalade. Ends with a long, creamy finish.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
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.