In case you haven’t already figured it out, I love Italian wines. Especially weird, crazy, indigenous varietal Italian wines.  Yup, the geekier the better! This week’s instalment of Thirsty Thirty-Something includes one of those said geeky grapes. Introducing Manzoni Bianco, a crossing of Pinot Bianco and Riesling done in the trendy “orange” style that we see coming to the forefront.  Upon opening this wine, I literally was looking for the “orange”. The bottle itself is dark, so you can’t even see through it to get at least an inkling of the wine’s colour.  And even after opening, my first thoughts were that this was definitely NOT an orange wine.  However, it’s considered “orange” because this is a white wine that sits on the skins during fermentation. Something that usually doesn’t happen. Red wines yes, white wines, no. The other thing that makes this wine different is that it is fermented in cement casks, followed by 12 months in acacia cask. Weird? I think so! Delicious? Absolutely!  Foradori is a family winery run by the mother and daughter team of Gabriella and Elizabetta Foradori.  They have a very small production, with only 1500 cases per year, with the signature wine being the Teroldago.  But that’s for another post…guess you’re gonna have to come back to the blog and read some more!

This wine is deeply lemon coloured, with kind of bronze tint. (Yes, I know my reflection is in this picture, but I really wanted you to get a sense of the colour of this wine, so needed to take my own bottle shot with some sunshine in the background!) The nose is very aromatic (again, no wonder…there’s Riesling in this!) Very pear-like with toasted almonds, honey and lemon zest. The mouth feel is full and round with a waxy apple cider and honey notes. Definitely a hand sell, but we happened to be trying it when a customer came into the store.  We gave him a sample and viola…two bottles sold!  Check this geeky wine out; it comes in just under the wire at $38.95!  Cin Cin!