Today kicks off the harvest in some of the 520 hectares of Guido Berlucchi’s Franciacorta vineyards. .
Today kicks off the harvest in some of the 520 hectares of Guido Berlucchi’s Franciacorta vineyards. .
The first clusters hand-harvested into the picking boxes are Pinot Noir from the Brolo vineyard, which overlooks the producer’s historic cellar; they were transported to the nearby production facility and its presses, custom-designed to ensure optimal-quality processing for Franciacorta fruit.
“Although the harvest began on a note of pessimism, we are now being surprised by positive results,” stated Arturo Ziliani, General Director and Winemaker. “The April freeze destroyed quite a lot of fruit, but at this moment, the clusters are sound and healthy, thanks in part to the high temperatures in recent weeks.
“Significant day-night temperature differentials over the past few days, with cool, breezy nights, will definitely help to preserve aromatic compounds.
“We already anticipated a lower crop level, which we will be able to measure only after all the grapes are in. We do, however, have some hopes that the season may still have some pleasant surprises for us; that we may know in a few days, when we do our tastings after the first fermentations.”
In sum, a growing season that is still evolving, and it is precisely these current, unusual conditions that justify the severity of Franciacorta’s Production Code, the most rigorous in the world for this category of wines, since it requires harvesting exclusively by hand, into small boxes, to which the 2008 modification added the possibility of quality-selecting just the finest individual clusters