IN DEPTH
I CLIMAT
It is our intention, with our “I Climat”, to present, in the truest and most authentic fashion, our wines’ terroir expression.
For more than thirty years now, Vie di Romans has been vinifying its own estate-grown grapes, in this way respecting, and therefore expressing, their respective vineyards of origin. Our Piere, Vieris, Vie di Romans, Ciampagnis, Dessimis crus, and others, embody the sensory quintessence of their grapes of origin, each with its own recognisable, and consistent historical character.
By adopting the traditional Burgundian term climat, we wanted to underscore, in the clearest way possible, the relationship of wine to its terroir—in our case, to its micro-environment, constituted by s homogeneous matrix of soil and climate. Every individual terroir provides a certain variability: it is up to the winegrower’s decision whether to capture its unique essence or to utilise it in a more generic fashion.
We selected chardonnay as the variety to focus on, since it demonstrates an innate, genetic-driven capacity to relate, in a very noticeable fashion, to the various soil-climate complexes in which it grows.
In order to allow effective expression of the purely natural factors operating in our various “climat,” we adopted overall uniform viticultural and winemaking practices, so that no extraneous factor would impinge on their unique natural expression.
The six different climat wines are sourced from specific parcels within the two crus vineyards of Vie di Romans and Ciampagnis, and they bear the names of the families that in the distant past cultivated those vineyards. In the past, local properties were very parcellised, and, in contrast to today’s custom, were cultivated for generations by the same family or owner.
The research parabola for our I Climat began some years ago, with studies of all the factors and variables relating to soils, climate, biology, and winemaking represented by the individual sites, while the wines themselves have been produced starting in 2015.
This initial vintage year is the fruit of 18 months’ elevage sur lie, followed by two years’ bottle-ageing. We deliberately chose this extended maturation period to allow the wine to develop the authentic sensorial expression that a specific soil-climate unit is capable of producing. We are convinced that the true identity of a wine and of the terroir that yields it emerge only with longevity, because only with that process does the wine discover its internal equilibrium, stability, and distinctively eloquent identity.