Tenuta Foresto, La Comedie, Piedmont, Italy

Francesco Pozzobon is a young winemaker farming eight hectares in Nizza Monferrato on chalky limestone. Francesco worked in London for a while, at much-loved and much-missed Terroirs, one of the first natural wine bar / restaurants in the UK. His experience there led to a love of natural wine, and dreams of working with Barbera, and he was finally able to settle in its spiritual home; Piedmont. 

Inspired by Masunobu Fukuoka, Francesco aims for minimal input agriculture; allowing natural systems to build and develop for the benefit of the vineyard and environment. He works with no additions in the cellar.

He farms mostly Barbera with a little Moscato, Cortese and Chardonnay alongside. The vines vary between 10-70 years old, and vineyard exposure is mostly south to south west. The parcels here are mostly tufa (limestone) with some clay and chalk. 

While Francesco is inspired by and respectful of local winemaking traditions he has a keen eye for experimentations with maceration and fermentation vessels, and his wines offer a unique expression of the area. To work outside the mainstream of a very traditional region, where conventional wines can sell for top dollar, is a brave thing to do. 

La Comedie is made from the first fruit Francesco harvests, aiming for higher acidity and lower alcohol. It is a loose, easeful pet-nat method red. To make it the bunches are partially de-stemmed and placed into 50hl cement tanks for 24 hours to extract a little colour from the skins. The must is then drawn off and pressed before being transferred to stainless steel for spontaneous fermentation with the skins added. The wine is bottled in spring with the residual sugar at 13mg/l and spends a further 6 months in bottle where the fermentation finishes (making the bubbles and using up most of that sugar). The wine is unfined, not filtered and has no added sulphur.

Producer - Tenuta Foresto
Country - Italy
Region - Piedmont
Variety / Blend - Barbera
Wine Style - Sparkling Wine
Farming - Organic with Biodynamic Principles
Soil - Clay and tuff and a small percentage of calcareous sediments
Vegan      
No added Sulphites