O

Giorgio Mercandelli names his wines with letters, not grapes or places. Five of them carry a vowel and a colour, and each is tied to one particular cru: E is yellow, A red, I green, U violet, and O, this one, blue.

He does not say which grapes are inside, since in his thinking variety is beside the point. Callmewine, an Italian merchant, describes O as local native white grapes from a vineyard planted in 1906, which Giorgio leaves unnamed, and another Italian shop gives the same 1906 vineyard. Wine Bureau, which brought the wine to Ukraine, lists it as Riesling. Riesling is the only white variety that profiles of the estate name, and Callmewine sells his yellow-labelled E as one. Here O is filed as a field blend: the grapes of one old vineyard, whatever they are.

The making follows the house rule. Callmewine describes a spontaneous ferment on the skins in inert Atlac resin vats, then up to a year in resin before bottling. Nothing is filtered or fined, and no sulphur is added.

Then comes the part Mercandelli cares about most: time. He holds that the fruit fades once a wine is bottled, and that it needs five to seven years in glass at least to find what he calls its memory. On Callmewine's page for O he asks for eleven.

By his clock, a 2007 has long since come round.