The Dolomites, Teroldego, and the Vineyards of Agricola Foradori
I was expecting to be told no. Foradori is kind of a legendary property. Limited quantities of exceptional natural wine made from indigenous grape varieties. So I didn’t think I’d get the chance to visit during my brief visit to Northern Italy in the lead-up to the Wine Media Conference. Even when they said yes, I was expecting a brief tasting, especially because it was in the middle of harvest. Instead, I was able to spend the entire afternoon with Theo Zierock and he showed the entire operation.
This is first of quite a few long format videos the Theo at Foradori.
Theo Zierock of Agricola Foradori guides us through the unique terroir of the Piana Rotaliana, a 700 hectare triangle surrounded by the Monte di Mezzocorona, the Grandos, and the Adige River. This area, a river delta formed during the last ice age, is home to a diverse array of soil types, shaped by the melting glaciers and the movement of water and stones.
Theo expertly explains the impact of these soil differences on the grapevines, how they affect the growth and the resulting characteristics of the wines. From the sandy substrates that produce light, crunchy, and juicy wines, to the denser pebbles that result in more complex and concentrated wines, you'll learn how the unique terroir of Piana Rotaliana gives rise to one-of-a-kind wines.
Don't miss this fascinating ten-minute video. Learn about the history of the area, the Dolomite mountains, and the unique wine varieties (like Teroldego) that thrive in this unique terroir.
Note: Transcript was created by a third party service and I’ve endeavored to clean up the spelling of ‘wine words.’ Any persistent errors are mine alone and not Theo Zierock’s. Or, watch the video. It is awesome.
Special thanks:
Click picture to play or download (190mb) at this link
Transcript:
Theo Zierock:
You have to imagine there's a big triangle. So this is the so-called Piana Rotaliana. It's 700 hectares of total surface. It's three sides. So you have on one side, the Monte di Mezzocorona, this mountain. The second side is the Grandos, so you have this mountain cutting. So you obviously the peak goes towards the... There is a valley opening up in the back called the Val di Non, and the third side is the Adige River, or the Adige Valley.
So basically, we're encapsulated in this triangle. This is a river delta, in fact. So you had, during the last ice age, you had an accumulation of ice and snow in the back, and especially around the Dolomites. So there is mountain chain called the Brenta, which is made out of dolomite stone, which is a limestone, a young limestone with a different component of magnesium.
So dolomite stone is basically, it's a thing that Mr. Dolomieu, in the late 1700s, discovered that actually the Alps are not all made in the same period, or they're not made out of the same stone, but there is this newer deposits that are Dolomites, and so they're scattered around the Alps. You have them in Veneto, but they're not overall. I mean, the Dolomites are not in one place. They're in several places.
During the last ice age, when the ice melted, what today is the River Noce, which passes between here and the mountain wall. That's the residual river from that melting. So basically, the water came, made its way through here, and started to cut out, to just break down the mountain, just open up. So this was washed with sand, and obviously with all the dolomite, and also different types of mountain stones like the Presanellas, so there's also some porphyry and other stones, and limestone, that were just rolled down the mountains from the melting glacier, and deposited here together with the sand.
So this means that the closer you are to the river that today still exists, the Noce, the more of this pebbles you have, because obviously the heavier stuff stays closer to the more intense water flow, and the rest is just washed with sand. So in terms of soil, we have a sandy surface, sandy bottom. So the ground is actually quite deep, and there is this layer of dolomite pebbles that varies in its intensity, thickness, and in the types of stones, depending on where you are in this plane. So even though we are an alluvial delta, the soil differences are these stones, which if you have a higher density of the stones, obviously the roots of the grapes have to move around more, so they become a bit more complex and tends to not have such an opulent growth in terms of leaves. They tend to have more density on the grapes, less fruit, but also denser fruit.
While if you have a more sandy substrate, like in the case of Sgarzon, obviously the roots go down easily. The plant has more... It's more vigorous, so it shoots more. It concentrates less on the fruit, but more on the plant growth. And so you tend to have lighter, crunchier, juicier wines, let's say, less density, which back in the day would be less qualitatively, highly regarded vineyards, but obviously, luckily, we're getting over that definition, in the sense that obviously in terms of age-ability, like if you value a bottle or a vineyard based on how long it can hold in the cellar, well then you will always have a little bit of an advantage in the denser parts.
But in reality, the variety in our case, makes more difference in terms of aging, because we have high acidities, a lot of fruit, a lot of dark blue color. We don't have a lot of tannins, so what makes our wine's age is actually the acidity combined with the annocyanins that are contained. It's the variety with the second highest annocyanins in Italy after a variety that grows in Verona, which is called [foreign language 00:04:01].
So this is a very old agricultural landscape, like to make wine here is very historic, since the Roman pasted, probably also before. But when the Romans basically built up the roads to go and beef with the Celts and the Swiss, they established the first settlements in the valley, which was kind of a pain in the ass because you had a lot of malaria. The River Adige would go over, so it wasn't like the best thing to do. That's also why most of the villages are built against the mountains or on the mountains. In the valley, usually there was nothing. Now there's intensive agriculture and some new villages and cities, but the river was only channeled in the late 1700s, from the Hapsburg regime, so from the Austrians. So until then, there was not much living in the valley, but there was a lot of doing stuff in the valley during the seasons where it wouldn't be aggressive.
So the wine culture here, on the other hand, because this river is very small and you have very easy-to-work soils, and you were quite far away from the main river, so when it would go out, it wouldn't wash all in, this was always a place where viticulture was safe. Also, you're protected by the mountains. So on one hand, the sun goes up there, and goes down behind this mountains, as you can see now, which means that the Monte di Mezzocorona is shined on basically all day.
So it charges up with a lot of heat. It's our heating system. And also, since the sun goes down there, the shade starts in Mezzolombardo and moves then towards Mezzocorona, which is the other village, which means that you always have half an hour, at least, less direct sunshine in this part compared to the other side, which creates two different areas in terms of wine production, in terms of density, because you add it up during every day of the year. And also, you have the heat source of the heating system during the night of this thing charging up with heat, which accentuates, which polarizes even more this distinction between warm side and cold side.
This makes a broader distinction. And also, by the way, the river passes there. So you don't only have more direct heat, not also more direct sunlight, but at the same time, you are also closer to the bigger amount of dolomite peaks, so it tends to condense even more. So this is the structure, and we are, I mean, we're looking southeast, and this is northwest. So basically the warmer sides are the northern sides, and the southern sides are the cooler ones. So the more you're here or towards the valley, the lighter and the crunchier the wines. The more you go towards this mountain, the denser and the, well, more opulent sides.
So that's why we have Morei on that side and Sgarzon on this side, to also have the same vinification, the same age of plants, to just have a direct comparison on the two terroirs, let's say. Also, what's worth mentioning is that this heating up of the mountain creates a terminal inversion. So basically the hot air going up pushes down cold air, which in the early morning, from these valleys in the mountains, you have fresh winds coming into this part and drying up the soil, which is very important for us because still the main problem is mildew, and that's why all the vineyards are planted facing these winds. So we don't plant facing sun. We plant facing winds. Also because these winds are not available to our neighbors, so it helps us a lot, plus the variety.
So Teroldego, which supposedly comes from Tyrol di gold, the gold of Tyrol, is a very ancient variety genetically. It's the uncle of Syrah. So the direct connections are with Syrah and the variety called Dureza in France. It is, as I said, good acidity, big fruit, resilient grapes. I mean, it's not attacked by a lot of flies. They don't go in. It holds against humidity very well. It has been over centuries adapted on growing on pergola. So the plant tends to go up and grow horizontally immediately, which makes it terribly... That's terrible for Guyot, so Teroldego doesn't like Guyot at all, but it's still fine. We planted this in the '80s, so we needed a little bit more of density right away, because Teroldego on pergola goes into overproduction very heavily in the first 20 years. So you get too much production. So in the '80s, it was hard for us to think of a wine that you could sell in a bottle that would come from high production vineyards, and today would be different.
But at the time, my mother decided with my father to plant Guyot to immediately have a lower quantities, to have more density. And it was more palatable for the market at the time, and we were starting out. I mean, still today, Teroldego, nobody gives a shit.
There is no sommelier waking up in the morning, thinking about what Teroldego should I put on my wine list.
All the wine produced in the Adige Valley was always going north. This was the most southern tip of the German-speaking world. From the late Roman times until basically today, it's still the same. So people drive down here. In the Middle Ages, they had to go to see the Pope to guarantee their power, because obviously divine power justified secular power, so basically when your son was becoming king, you kind of went to the Pope. They drove through here. They saw that the climate was different, that you had more opulent productions. On the way back, they would basically start to trade stuff from here. What in the '80s was the Primitivo for the Italians, the southern, warm red wine, was this area for the Germans.
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