RABOSO DEL PIAVE DOC

The Raboso del Piave DOC of Setteanime is the jewel on the king's crown — the estate's most intense red wine, the grave and deep tone in the choir of their wines. An ancient variety of the Piave area, shadowy and indomitable in character, Raboso knows how to win one's love like no one else once its nature is understood. Processed using the traditional method and aged for forty-eight months — at least thirty-six of which in oak barrels and a minimum of twelve in bottle — the Raboso achieves besides the Controlled Designation of Origin a perfect level of maturation that very few Italian reds of comparable ambition can claim.

The Raboso grape is genuinely ancient — one of the oldest documented varieties of the Piave area, whose name may derive from the river Raboso, a tributary of the Piave, near whose banks it has been cultivated for generations. It is a grape of considerable structural challenge: high acidity, firm tannins, and an intensity of character that demands extended ageing to achieve the integration and accessibility that make it genuinely pleasurable rather than merely powerful.

Forty-eight months of total ageing — thirty-six in oak and twelve in bottle — is the estate's answer to Raboso's structural demands, and it is the right answer. The oak contact develops the aromatic complexity and tannin integration that the raw Raboso requires; the bottle ageing allows the final development and softening that produces the black velvet character the estate describes.

Emerging from its firm and sapid aroma like black velvet, the Raboso del Piave DOC of Setteanime reveals itself as a wine of remarkable sophistication. The alluvial soils of the Piave area — loam and sand in the white wine sections, compacted clay in the red vine sections — give this Raboso a particular mineral depth and structural substance that elevates it above the already distinguished expression the variety achieves in this territory.

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