BIANCA

Bianca is the most personal wine in the Monte Deserto portfolio — the wine that, in the Socci family's own description, is produced when the dictating rules is only the personal taste of the winemaker, a creation that comes out representing his own wine, made just for the pleasure of tasting it. This is a statement of genuine creative freedom that distinguishes Bianca from the more protocol-defined expressions of the estate's Verdicchio.

A quick stop on the yeasts and its early disgorgement is the estate's chosen approach to tell the territory through a refermentation in bottle — a method that captures the freshness of the yeast activity while removing the cloudy deposit before it has significantly influenced the wine's character. This is a different interpretation of bottle refermentation from the extended contact of more traditional Metodo Classico production: it is about capturing a moment rather than developing a complexity.

The soil speaks through Bianca with particular directness: the calcareous marl with an important clay component, the lively acidic vein and a present saline note that are the characteristic contributions of the Monte Deserto hill to every wine produced from its three hectares. What changes from wine to wine is the winemaking approach that mediates between soil and glass — and in Bianca, that mediation is reduced to the minimum that the winemaker's personal taste determines.

The result is a Verdicchio of honest, immediate character — the wine the winemaker wanted to drink rather than the wine the appellation prescribes. When making rules gives way entirely to personal preference, what emerges is sometimes the most interesting wine in a range. At Monte Deserto, Bianca is that wine.

Available through UniqueWines. Since 1973.