
Wow, the experience this time is positively different. A beautiful and charming bouquet of dog rose, sour cherry, white pepper, raw meat and balsamic. Juicy and a bit funky. Good balance, where acidity and tannin work together to please my buds (taste buds, yo). The aftertaste is long. Complex and interesting.
Tasted blind. Didn't guess. Turned out to be a Pinot Noir made by Greek in Collio. A fistful of sour berries (dogwood and red currant), leather, white pepper and balsamic. It's intriguing, but I find it hard to drink this wine. VA is not well integrated, and instead of increasing complexity, it just bothers me. On the other hand, it has good fruit.
Noir is the red Pinot Noir of Paraschos, the Greek-origin family that farms ponca (marl) vineyards around San Floriano del Collio in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The fruit comes from a small plot at the foot of Monte Sabotino planted on a rare seam of blue marl, and the wine is bottled as Venezia Giulia IGT, the broad regional designation the family uses rather than the Collio DOC. Vinification follows the estate's natural approach: spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts on the skins for about three weeks in oak, without forced cooling, then long aging on the lees in 500-litre Slavonian and French oak casks, without added sulfites, and bottled unfiltered ('non filtrato'). This 2011 is a 'Special Vintage' release that was held far longer than the regular Noir, resting roughly 60 months on its lees before bottling. It is labelled at 12.5% alcohol and was imported to Ukraine by WineWine.