San Michele Appiano winery plays a leading role in the South Tyrolean and Italian wine scene, being able to boast over 100 years of history that, since 1907, have brought it today to own a heritage of 380 hectares of vineyards, managed by 330 members under the leadership of President Klaus Pardatscher, and with the technical support of oenologist Hans Terzer and his team.
If in the vineyards it is allowed that the individual members, regularly followed by Terzer, put in place the most suitable production methods to exalt what nature already spontaneously provides, thanks to 2000 hours of annual sunshine combined with cool nights and the important excursion ends daily, in the cellar is Terzer himself to enter the game. To make the work even more effective it was built a new cellar of 30,000 square meters, in which the various stages of production are succeeded by gravity fall, and the large spaces allow to work separately more parcels at the same time.
The qualities of this winemaker, however, are not only evident in his ability to produce great wines but also in his ability to “read” the times and anticipate them, creating wines destined to enter the history of Alto Adige. Terzer in fact, in addition to being, at the end of the 80s, the “father” of the famous Sanct Valentin lineup, the visiting card of the winery, has recently become the protagonist of its further development, with the addition of three new lines recently released on the market, including the prestigious TWC “The Wine Collection”. These are bottles made from selections of vineyards, in a limited edition of 3000 copies per reference, produced exclusively in the best vintages with the aim of offering, to the most demanding wine lovers, intentionally exclusive wines.
The Pinot Noir TWC, for example, comes from small vineyards of 20-25 years in the Appiano Monte and Rungg area, composed of soils with a calcareous skeleton, from which no more than 35 quintals of grapes are obtained per hectare. The grapes, once selected already during the harvest, cold macerate for about five days before fermenting in steel tanks; the wine obtained, then, ages for 12 months in small oak barrels and for other 12 in larger barrels (12 hl) before bottling and marketing.
The 2016 vintage has a light ruby color, and an olfactory range that opens with notes of sour cherry, vanilla, powder and pot pourri, followed by pomegranate, orange peel, roasted coffee and vinyl, with concluding boisée and hematic echoes of graphite. It is in the palate, however, that the real magic takes place thanks to the incredible balance between breadth, depth, softness and balsamic freshness, with a rarefied and silky tannin and an aftertaste sensation in which a rainbow of red fruit, in perfect maturation, returns together with the most noble and elegant spices that accompany the sip until a greedy and almost endless closure.
Rating: 94/100
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