Touching a Legend
Seven vintages of La Stoppa Ageno, from the current 2022 back to a 2005 from the Emilia IGT era, with a Nicola Gatta Molener to open.
By Boris · Hosted by Boris Buliga
Seven vintages of one wine - La Stoppa's Ageno, the skin-macerated Malvasia that more than any other bottle taught this table what orange wine can be. We ran it from the current 2022 back to the 2005, a bottle from the era when the label still said Emilia IGT and the blend still carried Ortrugo and Trebbiano alongside the Malvasia. A Nicola Gatta Molenér opened the evening while the glasses were being sorted.
The vertical had everything a vertical should have: a reference bottle confirming its status (the 2015), a vintage I keep arguing with (2017), one probable casualty of the warehouse shelling (2019), and a finale that felt like touching a legend. Ten of us, one producer, seventeen years between the youngest and the oldest bottle.
Nicola Gatta Molenér 09/23
Nicola Gatta grows Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at 400 to 450 metres in the morainic hills of Gussago and Cellatica and deliberately declassifies everything out of Franciacorta - the labels say Vino Spumante and count lees time in lune, moons. Molenér, named for the family miller's nickname in Brescia dialect, is the flagship riserva: 90 moons on the lees, a steel-fermented base assembled with cement-kept reserve wines, nothing filtered, no sulfites added anywhere. Gatta's own description names oxidation as part of the wine's intended balance. Extra Brut, disgorged September 2023 per the label code.
The full note is for members.
Join to read it and the restLa Stoppa Ageno 2022
La Stoppa's flagship white, named for the Genoese lawyer Giancarlo Ageno who founded the estate in the late nineteenth century. Elena Pantaleoni has run the property since 1991, Giulio Armani has been in the cellar since 1980, and Ageno is one of Italy's earliest modern revivals of long skin contact - cited alongside Gravner as the origin story of what everyone now calls orange wine. Malvasia di Candia Aromatica macerated around four months, native yeasts, 40-hectolitre wooden tanks, no filtration; pure Malvasia and Vino Bianco on the label since the 2017 relaunch. The 2022 comes from the drought year Emilia-Romagna picked more than a week early, yet it still took its standard four months on skins - 27,236 bottles.
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Join to read it and the restLa Stoppa Ageno 2020
The big crop of the vertical: 40,320 bottles, the largest Ageno run of these seven vintages. The Piacenza hills had a quality year in 2020 even as hail trimmed local volumes, with the area's Malvasia di Candia noted for aromatic intensity. Regime unchanged - four months on skins, native yeasts, big wooden tanks, nothing added - and at 12.5% it is the gentlest of the modern releases.
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Join to read it and the restLa Stoppa Ageno 2019
A 21,300-bottle vintage from a season that gave Emilia-Romagna a fifth less wine than 2018 but excellent quality: slow, balanced ripening after a rainy May, with big day-night swings. Its Ukrainian history is heavier than its Italian one - the bottles that reached Kyiv survived the russian shelling of the Wine Bureau warehouse in 2022. And for some reason I cannot find my own way around this wine - every time, it lacks something.
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Join to read it and the restLa Stoppa Ageno 2018
23,800 bottles, around 200 of which made it to Ukraine, from the rebound year that put the national crop up 24% on tiny 2017 - Assoenologi called 2018 uneven, with excellent peaks. The house regime as always: four months of maceration, native yeasts, 40-hectolitre wooden tanks, unfiltered, nothing added.
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Join to read it and the restLa Stoppa Ageno 2017
The relaunch vintage: first year labelled Vino Bianco instead of IGT, first year of the current label, and the year the blend became pure Malvasia di Candia Aromatica - the back label drops Ortrugo and Trebbiano entirely. It was also brutally scarce: April frost, hail and summer drought cut the regional crop by up to 30%, and only 13,300 bottles of Ageno were made.
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Join to read it and the restLa Stoppa Ageno 2015
The last bottle of the old regime in this lineup: Emilia Bianco IGT on the label and the classic blend of Malvasia with Ortrugo and Trebbiano. A hot summer reset by mid-August rains, a year Assoenologi called qualitatively excellent, and 17,000 bottles declared right on the back label.
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Join to read it and the restLa Stoppa Ageno 2005
The legend slot: the era of the etched front label, Emilia IGT, and a back label that declared everything in two sentences - old estate vineyards of Malvasia, Ortrugo and Trebbiano treated only with sulfur and copper, spontaneous ferment, long maceration, a year in botte, no filtration. 12,790 bottles, made three years after the cuvee's 2002 debut.
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