Elba Aleatico Passito/Aleatico Passito dell’Elba
Detto anche Aleatico Passito dell’Elba
Elba, the largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest in Italy, makes a single DOCG: a sweet red from Aleatico grapes dried in the sun. Its 224 square kilometres are hilly, with the granite massif of Monte Capanne rising above 1,000 metres in the west, and vines grow from sea level to 450 metres. The soils follow the island's complicated geology: loose, free-draining granite sand in the west, calcareous and stony ground in the sedimentary centre, and shallow, mineral-rich soils on metamorphic rock in the east — all of them poor in organic matter. Continua a leggere ↓
- Livello
- DOCG
- Regione
- Toscana
Elba Aleatico Passito in breve
The climate is Mediterranean, averaging about 17 °C, with around 700 mm of rain, rising to 900 on the northern slopes of Monte Capanne. The dry, sunny Septembers gave the island its habit of drying grapes in the open for ten to twenty days, as on other Mediterranean islands. By the rules the bunches must dry for at least ten days, until their sugar reaches 30 per cent, and the wine may not be sold before the first of March of the following year. It must also be bottled on the island, because shipping it across the sea in bulk could spoil it.
Vines came with the Etruscans, though the old bush-vine training points to the Greeks, and Pliny the Elder called Elba an island rich in wine. Aleatico Passito became a DOC in 1967 and a DOCG in 2011.