Cataldo Calabretta Ansonica Bianco Calabria IGP

Cataldo Calabretta represents the fourth generation of a family of winemakers and is the leader of a group of young winemakers working organically and with low intervention.  After studying Oenology and Viticulture at the Faculty of Agriculture of Milan, he worked for a few years in a number of Italian wineries, before deciding to refurbish the old family cellars with his sisters.

For the past ten years, the estate has been run according to the principles of organic farming, an ethical choice, which year after year is paying off: they have renewed the vineyards, continuing to cultivate their vines on hilly land located in the heart of the DOC They only use indigenous yeasts and don’t add anything to the wines other than a minimal amount of sulphites. In the cellar, they renewed an old cement cuve, which proves to be an excellent vessel for the ageing of Cirò wine. 

Cataldo practices classic farming with bush training (also known as albarello), traditional viticulture, with organic manures, works the soil and allows grass to grow between the rows in the winter in order to nourish the soils. Hand-harvested grapes are destemmed into vats and undergo a six-day maceration and proceeded by a spontaneous ambient ferment, before maturation in cement tanks for ten months and bottling without filtration or fining. 

Ansonica (or Inzolia) is not very common in Calabria, but it has the characteristic of being well suited to coastal terroirs.  The vines are ideally situated on a single hectare of vineyard in Strongoli, only 300 metres from the coast of the Ionian Sea. The wine has an intense yellow almost golden colour, aromas of white flowers with secondary notes of dried fruit and hazelnuts. On the palate, the Ansonica is quite a full-bodied wine with excellent persistence and a salty mineral lick at the end.