The area in the province of Brescia, south of Iseo Lake, framed by its morainic hills, was known for the production of wine already at the time of Plinio the Elder and Virgil and, wanting to go even further back in time, the excavations have brought to light accumulations of grape pips dating back to prehistoric times. In that area, called Franciacorta and elevated to DOC in 1967 and DOCG in 1990, there is a family, that of the Uberti, who had begun to produce wines already in 1793, resulting in fact one of the oldest of the denomination tout court. The founder was called Agostino Uberti and had bought a small farmhouse, with its vineyards, in Salem, in Erbusco, the beating heart of today’s Franciacorta. In 1978, it was his descendant, Giovanni Agostino Uberti, supported by his wife Eleonora, who started to make wines suitable to become the famous Franciacorta sparkling wines.
Since then, the winery has not stopped growing, while remaining in fact a reality of small size and craft vocation, arriving to own 25 hectares of vineyards that annually produce 180,000 bottles. One of the first concerns of the Uberti family was to practice a model of ecological and attentive to the environmental impact viticulture, with interventions such as the enrichment of biodiversity, the abandonment of chemistry, and the replacement of automated machines with a lot of manual work. On the owned hilly, rich in skeleton, dry, well exposed and well ventilated soils, the grapes are allowed to grow beyond the normal period of maturation, obtaining, with this delayed harvest, a higher gustatory and olfactive concentration. Even if the vinification containers vary according to the cuvée to be produced, in order to preserve the green footprint of wines, from Uberti are used very low doses of sulfur dioxide, and the few filtrations always take place with pretty wide mesh, not to impoverish the wealth of the bases.
Among the wines produced, one of the most relevant is undoubtedly Franciacorta Extra Brut Millesimato Comarì del Salem, a blend of Chardonnay (80%) and Pinot Blanc (20%) growing in a vineyard of one and a half hectares, in the Salem area, the most historic one of the winery. After manual harvesting and a first selection in the plant, the grapes undergo a second selection process, destemming and a slight crushing, before the alcoholic fermentation, which takes place partly in barrique and partly in steel. The tirage takes place in spring and is followed by a bottle aging of five years, disgorgement, and another six months of rest before marketing.
The 2012 vintage shows a particularly intense straw color, with golden streaks, a perlage of great finesse, and an olfactory fan that opens on notes of kumquat, peach in syrup, lime peel and dry mushroom, followed by custard, chestnut honey, croissants and Echiré butter, with final echoes of raisins, carpentry and roasting. The palate has a pleasantly creamy and juicy attack that slowly gives way to the soft/glyceric and savory/mineral components; all enriched by the return of yellow pulp fruit, dry mushroom and raisins that accompany the sip to a long and greedy closure.
Rating: 92/100
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