Fongoli - 'Palmetta' - Grechetto - Montefalco, Umbria, IT - 2021

Straw yellow with greenish reflections, significant consistency. A fine and delicate bouquet, of rare elegance, pleasant fruity and floral notes. The taste denotes structure and great freshness. The finish is caressing and sumptuous with a wealth of aromas and splendid varietal nuances.

Soil: *Clay/silt, whit a good skeletal structure, high in organic substance, and a good nitrogen-carbon ratio. Higher in active limestone, which makes it ideal for the quality of the wines.
*Cultivation of the vineyard: The vines are cultivated using biodynamic techniques. Only copper, sulphur and biodynamic preparations are used as defence against disease. We work to increase the humus through green manure and biodynamic soil preparations. No synthetic chemical products are used.
Harvest: *By hand, from the first half of October.
*Grape varieties: Grechetto, the Orvieto clone, 100%.
Vinification: The grapes are harvested by hand from the first light of day until 11:00 p.m. They are destemmed and pressed, and only the first-pressing must be used. The low temperature of the must allows an initial static decanting with separation of the first sediment, then movement is activated with cadenced oxygenation. At the end of fermentation, racking and oxygenation allow the wine to clarify naturally and prevent reduction. Matured for about three months on the lees, the wine is then bottled without filtration or the addition of sulphur dioxide.
Bottle ageing: 3 months. Marketed in 75cL bottles.
Pairings suggestion: It goes very well with first courses with white truffle, with porcini mushrooms, sautéed white meats, soufflés, savoury pies with country herbs.

Serving temperature: 10° - 12°C.

The Fongoli company was founded by Decio Fongoli in the early 1900s, when he took over a property made up of several farms, located at the top of the hill in S. Marco, in the centre of the Montefalco wine-making area. As usual with the farms of the period, they produced wine and oil, as well as rearing pigs and cattle, and cultivating arable land. The first bottled wines date back to the 1940s, thanks to Angelo Fongoli, son of Decio, who produced Bianco S.Marco, Rosso di Montefalco and Vino Sagrantino Pregiato, at that time classified as table wines. Angelo's great passion led him to see the recognition of the DOC for Sagrantino di Montefalco in 1977, the only one in that year. Awards such as the Dujia D'Or for Montefalco Rosso in 1981 and 1983 and other local awards arrived in those years.
Since the end of the 1980s until 1999, the winery was run by his nephew Decio and since 1999, by his great-nephew Angelo, both of whom follow the original approach with ageing in large oak barrels, bottling strictly in-house and vinification with indigenous yeasts using only their own grapes. Today the property covers about 35 hectares in a single body, 23 of which are vineyards, 6 woodland, and the rest truffle ground and meadows, and is managed entirely according to biodynamic principles.
Fongoli’s historical archive and artefacts are a unique example of the history of winemaking and bottling in Montefalco. The epochal changes that it has gone through, and the generational, political and socio-cultural changes are represented by the labels of our wines, through various types of paper, background colours and obviously the legal wording, but all are united by the common thread of essentiality that over time has become one of the traditions of the Fongoli family.