Meet our Wine Zoo: Le Fraghe Bardolino
Meet our new red wine: Le Fraghe Bardolino 2008. It’s from the Le Fraghe winery in Cavaion Veronese, near Verona, in northeastern Italy. Verona was a vacation spot for Julius Caesar and the setting for Romeo & Juliet and the Le Fraghe Bardolino is definitely a story about two star-crossed grapes. On the one hand, you have corvina, a highly structured grape with lots of body and a distinctive sour cherry taste. On the other, you have rondinella grapes which are simple and uncomplicated, don’t have a lot of flavor but are low in sugar.
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Opposites attract, and the Le Fraghe Bardolino blends these two odd couple grapes, one a laidback stoner and one a body building type A control freak, to make a light, juicy, fruity red wine that is perfectly balanced between fruit (strawberry and sour cherries), mineral (slightly ashy) and spice (a bit of black pepper and cinnamon). It’s definitely a winter wine that goes well with stews and grilled food. The other wine of Verona is the Valpolicella, which is also made from corvina and rondinella grapes, but the Valpolicella is made about 10 miles away and has a bigger, more structured body. Bardolino? Much more laid back.
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Although Bardolino is notoriously resistant to terroir and more about the actual taste combination of corvina and rondinella grapes, the La Fraghe winery is kind of a cool place that has a lot to do with how this particular Bardolino turned out. It’s a small (50 acre) vineyard that’s a labor of love for its owner, Matilde Poggi, who makes the wine in her 15th century stone farmhouse. The farm has been in the Poggi family since 1880 but Matilde Poggi harvested her first grapes in 1984. She didn’t come into the wine business with a lot of experience and there weren’t many expectations when she started, which she says allowed her to “listen to the land” and make wine that she felt reflected her vineyard. For her, this wine is a personal expression of who she is and where she grew up, the kind of farm she runs, and the way she makes wine.
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(The official Le Fraghe website)
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