2015 Foradori, Pinot Grigio, Fuoripista, Vigneti delle Dolomiti, Italy.
One of Italy’s most exciting winemakers, Elisabetta Foradori is one of the queens of the natural wine world mixing modern thought with ancient methods, along with biodynamics makes clear and beautiful wines mostly from her estate near Trentino of the Alto Adige in the Dolomites, or Italian Alps, though she has added a winery in the Tuscan Coast region, Ampeleia in recent years. Most famous for her Teraldego reds, Foradori’s whites have gained a cult like status with wine enthusiasts with her Manazoni and Nosiola from her Fontanasanta vineyard easily becoming some of Italy’s best wines with their skin contact and amphorae aging adding to the excitement and thrill in these complex wines, In 2014 Foradori added a skin contact Pinot Grigio, making her first single varietal from this grape, sourced from a near by biodynamic vineyard it is also her first colorful Orange Wine, you’ll note she even puts an orange wax capsule on it so you know what you are getting. The 2015, from a warm vintage is sweet fruited, but with savory/earthy tones and bright energy with a lovely pink/orange hue that some might confused with a Rose, until they taste it of course! Wonderfully deep and exotic with vibrant citrus, apple, cherry and baked peach fruits, along with saline, wet river stones, a hint of meatiness, leesy notes, dried white flowers, spices and flinty mineral. Grown in Campo Rotaliano by Marco Devigili on gravel, sand and alluvial soils, the Fuoripista, which means “another way or different path” with a view of nature was hand picked, native fermented on the skins as well as aged in clay pots (Spanish Amphorae) for 8 months, in similar fashion to ancient Georgian wines and more recently Giusto Occhipinti at COS. This brilliant and delicately nuanced wine has a dreamy texture and dry extract giving an almost tannic spine, this is a thinking persons wine and needs plenty of time to reveal itself and full personality, and while some orange wines can be funky and hard to love completely, this wine really pleases the palate and has impressive mouth feel and weight, but retaining a lightness and lift that intrigues and keeps your attention.
($40+ Est.) 93 Points, grapelive

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