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L’Apparita became a cult wine right from its first vintage in 1985, and brought Castello di Ama to the attention of wine collectors throughout the world. An impressively-structured monovarietal Merlot, it is immediately recognisable for its truly extraordinary elegance.The Apparita vineyard is formed by several small parcels (numbers 23, 24 and 25 in the estate’s vineyard register) situated at the upper end of the Vigneto Bellavista. The area amounts to 3.844 hectares (9.495 acres). Canaiolo and Malvasia Bianca were planted in 1975 but Merlot clone 342 was regrafted to the rootstocks in 1982-1985. The vines are trained in the open lyre system and the soils are particularly rich in clay. Both factors make this small cru a jewel of world enology.The clusters were quality-inspected in the vineyards, then hand-picked into small boxes and brought into the cellar on 29 September. They were inspected once again on special sorting tables, then de-stemmed and gently pressed. The must then went to stainless steel fermenters for fermentation, with punch-downs programmed through the entire process. The wine remained in contact with the skins for almost 4 weeks; it was then racked and put into oak barriques for the malolactic fermentation.
After completion of the malolactic in November, the lees were racked off, and the wine returned to barrels for 18 months of maturation. Half of the barrels were new, the other half once-used; all were medium-toast and fine-grained. At bottling, production was:
6,750 standard Bordeaux bottles
700 magnums
100 double magnumsTotal acidity: 4,38
Volatile acidity: 0,43
pH: 3,46
Alcohol: 13,93
Total dry extract: 32,07 |
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| The Sorting Table, LLC 1700 Second St. Suite 380 Napa, CA 94559 (707) 603-1460 |
Content and Images ©2013 The Sorting Table, LLC. |
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