La Spinetta Moscato Passito Oro (500ML) 2011
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Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
This Passito has a beautiful golden hue, “d’oro” and offers aromas of dried fig, ripe orange, and chestnut honey. On the palate are rich and sweet notes. Precise and sharp, with hints of vanilla, ripe citrus and pear, slightly sweetened. An enjoyable acidity gives this wine a clean and fresh finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is a special wine made from late-harvest Moscato grapes aged in French barrique for eight long years. The La Spinetta 2011 Piemonte Moscato Passito Oro (with only 1,000 500-milliliter bottles produced) opens to a dark golden color with polished copper or amber highlights. The perfumes are bright and intense, but interestingly, this aged Moscato shows a lot of herbal notes with dried rosemary and sage on top of honey, dried flowers and candied orange peel. The wine maintains its acidity, but it also shows thick layers of generous sweetness and richness, thanks to the hot-vintage air-dried grapes. Most of the fruit comes from the Mango area.
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Wine Spectator
Apricot, grapefruit, jasmine and pine aromas highlight this dessert white. Its sweetness is offset by bracing acidity and it ends with a bitter grapefruit note.
Other Vintages
2013-
Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
Eventually though the family’s vision was even grander. In 1985 La Spinetta made its first red wine, Barbera Cà di Pian. After this many great reds followed: In 1989 the Rivettis dedicated their red blend Pin to their father. From 1995 to 1998 they started to make their first Barbaresco Gallina, Barbarescos Starderi, Barbera d'Alba Gallina, Barbaresco Valeirano, and the Barbera d'Asti Superiore. In 2000 the family began making a Barolo and built a state of the art cellar, Barolo Campè.
In 2001 LA SPINETTA expanded over the borders of Piedmont and acquired 65 hectares of vineyards in Tuscany, between Pisa and Volterra to make three different 100% Sangiovese wines, as Sangiovese to us, is the true ambassador of the Tuscan terrain.
While Muscat comes in a wide range of styles from dry to sweet, still to sparkling and even fortified, it's safe to say it is always alluringly aromatic and delightful. The two most important versions are the noble, Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, making wines of considerable quality and Muscat of Alexandria, thought to be a progeny of the former. Somm Secret—Pliny the Elder wrote in the 13th century of a sweet, perfumed grape variety so attractive to bees that he referred to it as uva apiana, or “grape of the bees.” Most likely, he was describing Muscat.
One of the most iconic Italian regions for wine, scenery and history, Tuscany is the world’s most important outpost for the Sangiovese grape. Tuscan wine ranges in style from fruity and simple to complex and age-worthy, Sangiovese makes up a significant percentage of plantings here, with the white Trebbiano Toscano coming in second.
Within Tuscany, many esteemed wines have their own respective sub-zones, including Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. The climate is Mediterranean and the topography consists mostly of picturesque rolling hills, scattered with vineyards.
Sangiovese at its simplest produces straightforward pizza-friendly Tuscan wines with bright and juicy red fruit, but at its best it shows remarkable complexity and ageability. Top-quality Sangiovese-based wines can be expressive of a range of characteristics such as sour cherry, balsamic, dried herbs, leather, fresh earth, dried flowers, anise and tobacco. Brunello, an exceptionally bold Tuscan wine, expresses well the particularities of vintage variations and is thus popular among collectors. Chianti is associated with tangy and food-friendly dry wines at various price points. A more recent phenomenon as of the 1970s is the “Super Tuscan”—a red wine made from international grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah, with or without Sangiovese. These are common in Tuscany’s coastal regions like Bolgheri, Val di Cornia, Carmignano and the island of Elba.