Sauvignon

A wine for apéritifs and starters, excellent with lobster, scampi, salmon and sea fish in general. Also excellent with creamed and clear soups, risottos and dishes based on aromatic herbs.

Traditional Friuli single inverted and French Guyot with a plant density of 4,500 vines per hectare.

It is then allowed to ferment slowly and to refine sur lies at controlled temperature with frequent batonnages in big (30lt) Slavonian oak barrels. Only after a suitable resting and maturing period in the bottle the wine is ready to be presented to the consumer.

Harvested at the right degree of ripeness, a portion of the destemmed and crushed grapes is gently pressed; the other portion is first subjected to cryomaceration at 4° C for about 36 hours. The resulting must undergo cold static decantation and then a fermentation starter, prepared 3-4 days earlier from the selected best grapes of the same variety, is added. The must then ferments slowly in stainless steel vats at a precisely controlled temperature (16° C) for approximately 30 to 40 days. The maturation continues in stainless steel vats, during which time also a lengthy series of batonnage processes is carried out at set intervals to produce a well-rounded and full-bodied wine, with a delicate bouquet. After a long sur lie aging process, bottling is deferred until the month of February.

With a family history in winemaking, dating back to the early 1960s in the Eastern hills of the “Colli Orientali del Friuli” wine district, Livio Zorzettig (along with his wife, Gabriella) buy nearly 40 hectares of land, of which 23 hectares (57.5 acres) were planted mostly to grape vines native to the region. The small quantities of wine bottled at the time were sold on the local market to private clients and to small, local inss (osterias) as table wines to rightly accompany the local dishes. Fifty years ago Grandfather Min and then his son Livio Zorzettig gave life to a story that continues today with La Tunella of Massimo and Marco Zorzettig (who cherish the family traditions together with their mother Gabriella). They and their highly-valued collaborators, among whom they count their friend Luigino Zamparo, an oenologist of remarkable ability, fuse a sense of the present with the memory of the past, animated with the desire to experiment the new and to maintain the noblest traditions of the Colli Orientali del Friuli. The wines of La Tunella embody the fresh liveliness of new and creative energies… but history, memory and tradition remain the solid and enduring corner-stones of the present, constructing the future day after day.