Podere Sottolinoce Mennabo Vino Rosso Frizzante

About Podere Sottolinoce Mennabo Vino Rosso Frizzante

Podere Sottolinoce Mennabo Vino Rosso Frizzante is 100% Lambrusco di Grasparossa. a thin veil of black pepper spice, a measured, transparent expression of a very challenging grape variety. Native yeast, very low sulfur, clean and soulful bubbles.

More from Max on Mennabo: “Besides biodynamics, my #1 rule is to harvest at full maturity. So I don’t go searching for freshness by anticipating harvest in grapes whose trademarks are not freshness and acidity. A lot of people who are doing rose from Lambrusco di Grasparossa harvest maybe 3 weeks in advance, so they are getting the low pH and more acidity but they are making wine from unripe fruit. I take my risks, but I am searching instead for phenolic maturity in all my grapes. I really want my grapes and therefore my wines to express my land. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t, but the work of biodynamics and the way I tend my land give you the truth and the actual vintage. The only year I did something different was 2019 for Mennabo. I did two harvest passages on the same vineyard. One was at perfect maturity — analysis was perfect— sugar was there, ph was ok, etc — tasting the grapes was not ok for me. Half of it I harvested in this way. During the second harvest, I forgot analysis and I tasted the grapes. was when I thought the grapes expressed all the fruit and tasted phenolically ripe to me. I vinified separately, then I made an assembling of the same grape harvested in 2 different times. So that spice, that salty and floral thing, is also thanks to that different harvest.”

About Podere Sottolinoce

Podere Sottoilnoce is a winery started by Max Brondolo to sculpt new traditions of winemaking. His raw materials and his technique are drawn from the disappeared agricultural past, yet he finds observation and flexibility in viticulture essential in the future of wine. His home and vineyard are in Castelvetro di Modena, a long-inhabited village in the hills rising from the river Guerro outside of Modena. His vineyards draw on deep river-sediment soil and limestone. His wines are texturally involved joys, with grapes like Trebbiano di Spagna, Lambrusco Grasparossa, Uva Tosca, and others, only grown in these hills.

Max describes the aim of his work: “My dream would be to give you my land, the land where I am, by using traditional and maybe ancient and forgotten grapes tended in biodynamic harvested at full maturity, where my work is to try to blend them together in order that every one of them gives something to the glass.”