Back to basics
by Patrick Mur • 3 min read
The simplest things in wine are often the easiest to forget. It took a small wine house near Lake Trasimeno to remind me.
The simplest things in wine are often the easiest to forget. It took a small wine house near Lake Trasimeno to remind me.
At Winehouse Berioli, a team of just five makes around 60,000 bottles a year. The owner was born in the house where the cellar is now, so you could say he was born into the wine.
What struck me was how early they decide. They settle the taste of a wine before it goes into the barrel. Yes, the barrel, not the bottle. By the time anything touches oak, they already know what it's going to be.
For them, the harvest decides the taste. Most of their wines are vintage, so each one comes from a single year's harvest and every year is judged on its own. One year, one harvest, one honest answer.
Their signature wine is Spiridione, a Merlot. The grapes grow on the side of the hill with the sturdiest soil and the most sun. That's terroir in its simplest form: the place itself shapes the wine, and the best ground goes to the wine they're known for.
Spiros, their rosé, is made from Merlot too. Same grape, different choices, and a completely different wine: fresh and light, where Spiridione is structured and aged in oak. Even the label is different. Where most of their wines have a more traditional design, the Spiros shows a sailboat on the lake at sunset, with the mast cut out so the pink of the wine shows through. And, to my own surprise, I really liked it.
What stayed with me was how differently one grape can express itself. In Spiros, Merlot becomes a fresh rosé. In Spiridione, it becomes a structured, oak-aged red. Each is the result of choices made in the vineyard and the cellar, and of taking the time to make them well.
At home, there's one more choice to make: how to serve it. Berioli recommends 8 to 10°C for Spiros and 16 to 18°C for Spiridione. It's a small step, but it's the last one in a year of work, and following the winemakers advice will express the character they worked so hard all year to create.
That last step just might the most important one.
