Eugenio and Tamara Rosi of Azienda Eugenio Rosi
When our Alma Wine Academy sommelier class walked into Azienda Eugenio Rosi , it gave the impression of a family’s back storage, filled with boxes of wine and a smattering of colorful elementary school drawings. Immediately, the worlds of work and private life blurred into a rustic suggestion that the two were far from separate.
The woman who took us through, Tamara, was the winemaker’s wife and certainly much more in the daily operation of this boutique winery in Trentino. With amber-colored hair tied back in a casual ponytail and no-nonsense work boots, she expressed a down-to-earth, laid-back demeanor with a touch of grown-up hippie for good measure. Tamara offered a broadstroke introduction to the Azienda Eugenio Rosi winemaking philosophy and essentially welcomed us into the home she shares with her husband, Eugenio.
For the first time in this sommelier school odyssey, I took in the experience of wine as a product of grapes, and as a product of the soil, grown by a farmer, the first human touch of the libation as it were. And here was a farmer, or farming family rather, and therefore united by love and commitment to each other and to the earth, who decided to take winemaking into their own hands, independently and courageously according to the principles of biodynamic farming. From planting to harvest, barrique to bottle, Eugenio, the winemaker, and Tamara, his wife, had chosen to follow nature, in lieu of technology.
Eugenio came out to join Tamara in telling the story of their vineyard with an equal dose of humility and groundedness. His feet were on the ground, this ground, in Trentino, all of his life. Like all Italians, he getured with his hands, and what hands! Rugged, worn and dirt-ridged, they spoke of the soil, of his years working for a ‘cantina sociale’ or wine-making collective. He explained that he had been making wine from grapes rown on a collection of land parcels from around Trentino, and was ‘born under a Marzemino vine’.
Marzemino is an autoctonous red varietal from the pre-alpine region of Italy, and Eugenio grows his in the hills between Calliano, Volano and Rovereto. He gives the grapes all the time they need on the vine, within reason of course, and lets them mature further in a process called appassimento, or raisining, or drying of the grapes (think raisins). He uses large Slovenian wood barriques and small cherry wood barriques to age his wines, and doesn’t cut corners.
Eugenio Rosi has been called the Proletariat God of Marzemino and an artisan-winemaker. The down-home style in which he has chosen to make his wines includes just under ten hectares and 18,000 bottles per year, counting among them Marzemino, Chardonnay, Bianco IGT Vallagarina (Pinot Bianco 60%, Nosiola 20%, Chardonnay 20%), Cabernet Franc and the magnificent Doron 2005 Rosso Dolce VdT.
In his Marzemino Poiema 2006, Eugenio raisined 30% of the grapes, creating a succulent contrast between a crisp, acidic entrance in the mouth and a rich, mature fruitiness on the finish. A ‘capolavoro’, as the Italians say (a work of art).
The Doron 2005 Rosso Dolce VdT was a lovely finish to our tasting. It is an appassimento (dessert wine made from grapes that have been raisined). Eugenio has managed to capture the terroir of his corner of Trentino in the glass, with temperature shifts that create lively acidity and the super-maturation of the grapes adding their fruity sweetness, combining to form a wine that tells the story of its origins.
Not unlike Eugenio himself, and the lovely Tamara, the Doron invites you into its sensorial home, amongst sweet children’s drawings, and transmits a depth of passion found in small producers making rather big waves.
sarahcoursey 