2016 Ca' d'Gal Moscato d'Asti Vite Vecchia

Sandro Boido is one of the few Moscato growers pushing the envelope to reach for the highest quality, and this wine is his calling card. “It’s a huge debacle,” he told Eric Asimov of the New York Times. “Moscato has exploded in America, but which Moscato? Not Moscato d’Asti. Why are people willing to spend $100 on a bottle of red wine but refuse to spend $40 on a bottle of Moscato?”

As the name implies, Boido’s Vite Vecchia is drawn from old vines, a single parcel on just one hectare of the steeper, limestone-rich slopes of the Valdivilla hillside. Sandro's grandfather planted it with the old Moscato cultivar Canelli Moscato some 60 years ago. The wines are stored on cork for later release in large wooden boxes packed with sand. This is a traditional method of bottle maturation once used in the area, moderating temperature and moisture and blocking out all light.

This is a unique and compelling version of Piemonte’s famous sweet wine. Thanks to the vine age, south-facing exposure and unique blue tufa (clay/limestone soils), the vines here produce intensely flavoured, golden bunches of grapes that, in turn, gift a gloriously deep yet vibrant Moscato with greater textural depth and vinosity than you could have otherwise imagined possible from the grape. An earthy/smoky/mineral impact and complex development might remind you of a Riesling or even an aged Sancerre.