Alto Adige is renowned for Italy’s best white wines with a ‘cool’ profile and acidity, which is due to the fact that the hot, flat valley floors typically house apple orchards, while the vines take over as you move up the hillsides. This spectacular backdrop provides mineral wines and, not least, cool nights that guarantee acidity freshness in the wines. 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 cooperatives, a regular subscriber of 3 glasses of wine in Italy’s most important wine guide, Gambero Rosso.
‘Indra’ Sauvignon is highlighted in Gambero Rosso not only as a good wine, but also as value-for-money.
The grapes are hand-harvested from fields near the winery and fermented in stainless steel, where the wine also spends ½ year with the fin yeast before it is bottled. Aging in steel preserves the grape’s fresh, sprightly style, while a long time with the finger yeast gives aromatic depth.
Girlan Sauvignon ‘Indra’ smells something like ripe grape, blackcurrant leaves, elderflower and light green undertones with juicy grass and nettle as well as gravelly minerals that give a nice complexity. The taste is aromatic without being fat and rich; instead, the line is kept slim with an excellent acidity freshness. The aftertaste has both length and balance.
The style is closer to sancerre than New Zealand.
This is a very flexible food wine that goes well with a multitude of food types, but we can mention examples such as smoked salmon, sashimi, Thai food, elegant flatfish dishes, ceviche, young goat cheese, pasta dishes with fish, etc., etc.!
