A friend just got back from NE Italy and Slovenia and brought back a couple bottles for me to try. She knows I am always keen to try "natural" wine and freaky stuff in general and autochthonous and rare grapes. So she brought back a couple wines from the Raboso grape.
Tessère Redentor Rosato di Raboso Sui Lieviti 2008
Label
Apparently col fondo bubblies are all the rage now. Col fondo is basically the champagne method except it's left undisgorged so it is in contact with lees up to the point of it being drunk.
Raboso is used to make slightly sweet, bland bubbly, but from the few dry reds I've had from it, it seems to be a genuinely interesting grape with wonderfully astringent sensations and lots of structure from both tannins and acidity. So I was very happy to taste a genuinely good bubbly from the grape.
This is supposed to be a pink bubbly but it doesn't look that deep to me. A little hazy from the yeast. It really is quite lovely: obviously much leesy character but also vivid pomegranate and sour cherry sensations. Very lively acidity but also a fair bit of richness from the fruit and the lees ageing. It's almost as if Cantillon had made a beer using pomegranates instead of cherries (well, maybe not quite that sour).
Tessère Rebecca Raboso Passito 2005
This one is quite impressive, too. A deep, almost tarry character, so tannic and pleasantly astringent that it almost seems like a rich dry red on entry; but glorious sweetness soon smooths things over. There's some serious bite to this dessert. And that's only good IMO because too often these sweeties from Veneto aren't moreish due to a general soft, milky coffee kind of richness. A refreshing and moreish Passito (not something I thought I'd see myself write).
