The Wine: Sauro Maule Ca' Lombarda Merlot Tai Rosso 2019
Sauro Maule Ca' Lombarda is a red natural wine made from a blend of Merlot and Tai Rosso grown on limestone. Fermented and aged in stainless steel for about 8 months, organic farming, spontaneous fermentation with ambient yeast, unfined/unfiltered, no added sulfites.
The Winery: Sauro Maule
The farm “Il Cavallino” is located in the Colli Berici, the hills around the city of Vicenza, Veneto Region, Northern Italy. Sauro Maule's father, Lino, was a man with great experience and a love for horses and started the farm as a cattle breeding business. After Sauro took over, the farm expanded its activities to vine growing and winemaking. The old "pergola" vineyards were all replanted with new "guyot" vineyards, a trellising system that allows more oxygenation for the plants thereby reducing the need for treatments.
Sauro adopts a non-interventionist approach in the vineyard, he is not using any chemicals, herbicides or pesticides. In the cellar, he follows the principles of natural winemaking and uses sulfur dioxide only when needed and in very small quantities - sulfite content in Sauro's wine never exceeds 35 mg/l.
The Region: Veneto
Veneto is one of the most important wine regions of Italy, located in the Northeastern corner of the Italian peninsula. It borders with Trentino-Alto Adige (north), Friuli-Venezia Giulia (north-east), Emilia-Romagna (south), and Lombardy (west).
The capital of Veneto is Venice, which is also its most populous city, followed by Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, and Rovigo. The east coast of Lake Garda, the biggest Italian lake, is part of Veneto and so is the tract of Alpine foothills called Venetian Prealps.
Veneto is the leading Italian region for the quantity of wine produced – even though wine-producing regions such as Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy, Puglia, and Sicily all have bigger territories.
Some of its most famous wines are Amarone della Valpolicella, Valpolicella, Soave, and of course Prosecco. Other less-known but equally delicious wines are Recioto della Valpolicella, Recioto di Gambellara, Raboso del Piave, and Bardolino.
Veneto’s main characteristic is perhaps the great variety of wine types produced, obtained mostly from indigenous grape varietals – Corvina, Glera, and Garganega being the most common.
This is due as much to its specific geography and climate as it is to rather peculiar winemaking techniques such as the grape drying technique employed to make Amarone della Valpolicella, Veneto’s most famous red wine.