Alto Adige/Südtirol is famous for Italy’s best white wines with a ‘cool’ profile, which is due to the fact that the hot, low-lying valley floors typically house regular agriculture and fruit growers, while the vines take over as you move a little higher and the slope of the fields becomes too violent for traditional farming. In the spectacular backdrop of the mountains, the grapes get excellent sun exposure, lots of minerals from the eroded rock layers of the last ice age, and not least cool nights contribute to an excellent acid freshness in the grapes. The cooperatives are a dominant factor in Alto Adige; not just in terms of volume, but certainly also when the yardstick is called quality. Kellerei Girlan is one of the region’s model co-operatives with the celebrated winemaker Gerhard Kofler as a very active wreath cake figure.
The house’s most prestigious chardonnay features a simple, cheerful and beautiful illustration by local, now deceased artist celebrity, Paul Flora.
The hand-harvested chardonnay grapes come from top fields at an altitude of 450-500 meters near the winery in Girlan/Cornaiano. After a short maceration and gentle pressing, the wine is fermented in new, large French oak barrels of 1200 and 5000 litres, followed by approx. 10 months of aging and later malolactic fermentation in the same cask. The wine is then poured from the finger yeast, which has now given good depth to the aroma picture, and on to old barriques, which do not add any additional wood flavor to the wine, but micro-oxidise it, so that it develops and prepares for a long life in the bottle.
This wine possesses both fatness and fullness without giving up on minerals and freshness. There is already – early in this wine’s life cycle – lots of enjoyment with the scent and taste of honeydew melon, lemon, apricot, freshly churned butter and fresh almonds. The aftertaste is long and stringy, still without aging aromas, which will come with another year or two in bottle.
Enjoy Girlan Cuvée Flora Chardonnay with fried or grilled salmon, mullet, light meat dishes, fried or poached chicken, or as a versatile cheese wine, where it may or may not be difficult to find a single wine that goes with most things.
Served from a spacious white wine glass at a temperature of 10-13°.
This is a particularly durable chardonnay, so if you like fully matured wine, it can be stored in a good cellar for at least 10 years from the year of harvest.
94 points Veronelli
