COSÌ È

Così è — So It Is — is the Metodo Classico Extra-Brut of the Monte Deserto estate: a traditional method sparkling wine from Verdicchio grapes that demonstrates Federico Socci's experience in France applied to the grape variety most intimately connected to his family's three-hectare hill vineyard. The name is both a statement of acceptance and a declaration of quality — this is what it is, and what it is has been shaped by the specific character of the Monte Deserto terroir and the Socci family's particular understanding of Verdicchio's sparkling wine potential.

The Metodo Classico production requires a commitment to time and process that the still wine productions of the estate do not demand. The Verdicchio grapes are pressed, fermented, and then undergo secondary fermentation in bottle — the prise de mousse that creates the fine persistent perlage characteristic of traditional method sparkling wines — before an extended period on the lees that develops the autolytic complexity, the bread and pastry notes, and the structural depth that distinguish Metodo Classico from other sparkling wine methods.

Così è is described as a classic method as elegant as it is versatile — one that is as accommodating at the table as it is impertinent to taste. This pairing of elegance and impertinence captures something essential about traditional method sparkling wine in general and about this estate's expression of it in particular: the wine has genuine sophistication and genuine irreverence in equal measure, the product of a winemaker who has learned his craft in France and applied it to a Marche indigenous variety of considerable personality.

The character of this wine is the whole of the vine from which it comes and the hand of those who have shaped it — the estate's own description, and one that applies with particular accuracy to a wine as personally conceived and executed as this one.

Available through UniqueWines. Since 1973.