Collavini Il Grigio Brut Spumante
£12.95
The wine
A pale, star-bright straw colour shot through with greenish highlights, showing a persistent mousse of fine bubbles. A fresh and aromatic nose of golden delicious apple and ripe pear combines with warm crusty bread tones. Harmoniously rounded, with a delicate touch of citrus and a very long finish.
Il Grigio is made by a long, slow tank fermentation, a method Manlio Collavini pioneered: rather than the usual few weeks, the second fermentation runs for months at low temperature, which builds finer bubbles and greater complexity than Charmat normally gives. Chardonnay with Pinot Grigio, from the Friuli plain.
The producer
Collavini
View all Collavini winesFour generations of Collavini have made wine in Friuli, and the family now work from the sixteenth-century Villa Canlungo at Corno di Rosazzo, in the hills of the Collio on the Slovenian border.
Friuli is Italy's finest white wine region and its history explains why. The land passed between Venice, the Habsburgs, Italy and Yugoslavia, and the vineyards carry varieties from all of them: Friulano and Ribolla Gialla are native, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay arrived under Austrian rule, and the whole area was a laboratory for modern white winemaking in the 1960s and 70s.
The soil is ponca, a layered marl and sandstone that crumbles readily and lets roots drive deep, and it is the reason Collio whites have the mineral tension they do. Manlio Collavini also pioneered a long, slow tank fermentation for sparkling wine, and the estate remains one of the region's most recognised names across both still and sparkling.
