Verduzzo

Verduzzo Friulano vinified bone dry and handled like a red, which in Friuli is the contrary choice - almost everyone else reserves this grape for off-dry and sweet wine. Bressan ferments spontaneously on indigenous yeasts and leaves it several weeks on the skins, which is where the deep amber colour and the tannin come from. Verduzzo has thick, unusually tannic skins for a white variety, and nothing here is done to soften that.

What follows is slower still. The wine goes into 2,000 litre barrels, built artisanally from a mix of local woods, and stays on its lees for three to four years with periodic batonnage. When the individual barrels are judged ready they are assembled into a single steel vessel and left at least three months to settle clear on their own, then bottled unfiltered.