Gradoli, Lazio
In Gradoli comune on Lake Bolsena, the largest volcanic crater-lake in Europe, Georgea Marini and her husband Alessandro produce organic wine from local varieties on a farm of less than 2 hectares. Their skin-macerated wine made from Procanico--a high quality biotype of Trebbiano Toscano--is a stunner, with deep, amber color and evocative, savory aromas and flavors of sage honey, fennel, dried citrus and wildflowers.
The little plots of land in this area were given to families by the church in early 900. Devoted to totally organic and regenerative farming, Georgea and Alessandro use only treatments of copper and sulfur as they tend to their fifty year old vines, planted in volcanic soil shot with clay. The hand-harvested grapes are manually pressed and fermented spontaneously with native yeast. Macerations are long, and aging takes place in old used barrels. The name Zero8 is for the year that their label was established, and also the year their daughter, Ginevra, was born.