SEA

Sea is the wine that most directly references the landscape of the WIR estate — the Kalterersee Klassisch DOC produced from historic plots above Lake Caldaro in the areas called Pulvernoa, Panditsch, and Palurisch at approximately 300 to 350 metres above sea level. In its name, the word Sea evokes both the lake that gives the wine its designation and the ancient geological reality that the sea once covered these calcareous Alto Adige hills. A particular wine of typicality where elegance and finesse are not lacking.

The Kalterersee — Lake Caldaro — gives its name to one of Alto Adige's most characterful and most distinctly regional red wine appellations. Produced from Schiava varieties — the light, fruity, immediately characterful indigenous red grapes of this specific Alto Adige territory — the Kalterersee DOC is a wine of particular local identity that the export market has only recently begun to discover with the enthusiasm it deserves.

Andi Sölva's Sea is not vinified in purity from a single Schiava variety but traditionally from a mix of Schiava Grossa, Schiava Gentile, and nine percent Lagrein — a blend that gives more complexity than a single variety would provide, while remaining firmly within the Kalterersee tradition of light, elegant, aromatic reds that owe their character to the distinctive microclimate of the Lake Caldaro basin.

The historic plots are among the most valuable aspects of this wine: vines of fifty to one hundred years of age growing above the lake at 300 to 350 metres, in mostly very old vineyards whose depth of root system and complexity of soil interaction produce a character that younger vines in the same appellation cannot replicate. Ripe grapes harvested in two shifts, vinified in steel and wooden vat, aged in Tonneaux sur lie.

Available through UniqueWines. Approximately 8,000 bottles per year from owner-managed estate.