DESERTO

Deserto is for the Socci family tradition and territory — a Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi DOC Classico Superiore that begins with a deliberate act of restraint: a lighting of the vineyard that concentrates only on selected grapes deliberately harvested at the end of the harvest, the last and most concentrated fruit. This timing decision — waiting for the final, most fully developed clusters — is the first and most consequential choice the estate makes in producing this wine.

The approach adopts the Vinooxygen process — vinification in the complete absence of oxygen and without decanting. This is a technique of considerable precision that prevents the oxidative processes that begin the moment grape must is exposed to air, preserving the wine's aromatic freshness and colour integrity from the earliest stage of production. Without decanting, the wine retains the natural complexity that settling and racking would partially remove.

The Vinooxygen process leads to a refermentation in bottle before the yeasts can impose themselves on the typical traits of the vine — a careful management of the secondary fermentation that allows the Verdicchio grape's natural character to remain the dominant voice in the wine rather than being obscured by the autolytic notes that extended lees contact can produce.

The estate's description of Deserto is both a sensory observation and a philosophical statement: Salt. Limestone. Verdicchio. Sparkling and authentic. The soil of the Monte Deserto hill speaks through this wine in its most direct and least mediated form — the calcareous marl with its important clay component, its lively acidic vein and present saline note, expressed through a winemaking process that seeks to introduce as little as possible between the land and the glass.

Available through UniqueWines. Since 1973.