2018 | Guerra Albano | Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso

It is taut, delightfully precise, and energetic, with dark forest fruits and a spicy personality drawn directly from the local ponca soils.

Producer Information

When asked about his approach to winemaking, Dario Guerra just smiles and offers, “we are students of the leaves.” Getting to know him, one begins to realize this is an entire way of life for his family and far from hyperbole. Working up to 15 hours a day in the field, the Guerra’s are in a near-constant state of green harvest, sculpting individual plants all season long so that (no matter what the weather does in a particular vintage) they effectively have every exposition to choose from. “Wine is made in the vineyard, not the cellar,” adds Dario, who believes what happens post-harvest should only have a 10% influence on the final result. For this reason, Guerra Albano also uses a soft, peristaltic pump - with the added benefit of producing less astringent wines with more integrated tannins. “He’s a totally unique winemaker,” marvels our Italian partner, Antonio Sanguineti. “Dario is just nature and mathematics.” Like the lion’s share of small estates across Europe, Guerra Albano farms their grapes organically, but remains non-certified. A key part of this equation for Dario (and countless others across France and Italy) is dry-farming. Given that his average vine age is 40 years old, it’s not unusual to have roots diving 30-50 feet straight down into the hillside, resulting in complex, terroir-driven wines steeped in Friuli’s telltale minerality. Consistent with his philosophy of working in tandem with nature, Dario doesn’t terrace – he says he prefers to work with the natural gradient of the hill, which also helps him to avoid rocks and take full advantage of the rich ponca topsoil. As this flysch-driven layer only goes down for the first meter or so, it can be easily thinned or lost through displacement. However, “if instead you choose the right clone and disturb the land as little as possible,” he says, “you create a natural cycle.”

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