Score: 92/100
This white Lugana wine by Onepiò Winery is made from 100% Turbiana di Lugana grapes (Trebbiano) from the Desenzano del Garda, on a clay terroir near the Garda Lake in Northern Italy.
Winemaking Facts
During harvest, grapes are hand-picked in wooden 15-kg crates and brought to the winery where refrigerated for one day to make sure they are cold. Then grapes are washed with ozone treated water. After the drying, the grapes are divided in two parts:
- The first part undergoes a maceration on skins to extract the grape’s natural primary aromas and flavors. The must (juice) is left in contact with the skins in a stainless-steel tank for one day, extracting color and perfume from the fruit. The traditional winemaking process for whites in the area.
- The second part goes through a more modern process, where the grapes are pressed in a vacuum-sealed press at cold-temperatures to prevent any oxidation at all.
The combination of both winemaking processes allows giving the wine a more complex organoleptic and visual aspects.
Fermentation was run by selected yeasts at 19 degrees Celsius, before a 6-month maturation in stainless steel tanks. No ageing in wine barrels.
So how good is Onepiò Winery Lugana white?
Tasting Notes
This Lugana white comes in a bright and shiny lemon-yellow color, a solid medium intensity, but so vibrant to look at, like a shiny pale gold.
The nose however, is not shy of being intense, and is just as vibrant. Rather powerful, and more importantly zesty, fresh lemon squeeze aromas dominate the profile.
They are supported by the truly outstanding feature in this wine’s scents: intense tropical notes of passion fruit and pineapple. Not your grassy and sweaty passion fruit character like in some New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc for example. We are here with ripe passion fruit. Ripe, yet fresh pineapple notes provide both freshness and great richness.
Add hints of almond, vanilla and brioche, toasted hazelnut, all adding a sense of biscuit yumminess, and you have an outstandingly vibrant and quite complex aromatic profile, youthful and fruity.
The palate is dry and crisp with good acidity, but very balanced by an oily texture and round body. The intense citrus and lifted ripe tropical flavors provide a sense of sweet fruitiness (without the wine being actually any sweet), but they have a balancing effect to the acidity without weighting up the wine.
Some slightly vegetal notes, of acacia leaves, or green tea provide some savory tones that also translate into as light savory and salivating bitterness towards the finish. A positive sign of food friendliness as much as the wine’s crisp minerality to the finish.
Overall
An absolutely pleasing, delightful I should say, white wine that strikes by an outstanding intensity of fruity flavors, tropical, and citrusy ones in particular. Dry, crisp, and vibrant, it is also rounded and well-balanced with a very solid concentration of flavors of various kinds. Fruit, biscuit richness, hints of spices.
A wine with every feature to please wine drinkers in search of a serious yet light-hearted white wine that delivers both zing and concentration.
Enjoy 🙂
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