Producer Casa Caterina

LUMBARDY

The company Casa Caterina is at Monticelli Brusati in the province of Brescia and is expertly led by the brothers Aurelio and Emilio Del Bono. The vineyard area is about 10 hectares and production is limited to 30,000 bottles. Through biodynamic viticulture and exclusively natural winemaking techniques, the company produces bubbles, red and white wines out of the ordinary. The main varieties grown are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Mounier. But Casa Caterina reserves other surprises, in fact among the vineyards are "hiding" even some rows of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Marsannay Gewurztraminer..e or beyond. With these vines brothers of Bono produce still wines by the scents and flavors. Their trademark, however, are the bubbles: the surprising fact is that, even if located in Franciacorta, the brothers Del Bono renounced D.O.C.G. and to all the advantages that this entails. They wanted to get away from the Franciacorta and produce bubbles in their own way: not all doses and long refinement on the lees. Cellar refermentations occur spontaneously in the bottle, without the addition of liquer de tirage. The long aging on the yeast do the rest, creating a very elegant bubbles that have nothing to envy to the much more famous "bubbles" French. Considerable knowledge of their work, intellectual honesty to the point of exit name to be free to work in the way they believe and not to release some labels in the years when the grapes do not seem appropriate to make his wine. Natural winemaker, nor organic or biodynamic, the only certification comes from the tasting of its wines, the use of pinot noir and chardonnay, from the use of barrels of five different woods, sulfur and copper in the vineyard when needed, the technique cold in the cellar used to leave clean the base wine before taking the froth. A rare bird: it has 7 hectares of vineyard land in Monticelli Brusati, in Franciacorta, it makes bubbles but not Franciacorta (to say as if one had excellent vineyards of nebbiolo on Cannubi and imbottigliasse that nebbiolo as IGT ...), long ago refinements on yeast (10 and older) and is crazy about the pinot meunier.