LA BAMBINA

EASY MENFI

TERROIR

HAND MADE

TRADITION

LA BAMBINA

ROSATO MENFI DOC

La Bambina is dedicated to strong women, to their power and energy, to their tireless motivation in fighting for their beliefs, to their talent for problem solving despite difficulties and complications.

It's the wine that I made against all advises that there was no future for such a rosé in the market and beyond expectation, at the winery and outside.

It is a pleasant expression of Nero d’Avola, which grapes are harvested at night to preserve their freshest aromas, and to give birth to a very exciting wine that reflects the personality of Menfi's terroir.

THE SHORT STORY

Grape variety: 80% Nero d'Avola and 20% Frappato
Soil: clay-calcareous soil, rich in lime-stones
Vineyard: planted in 2007, vertical shoot positioning, Guyot
Winemaking : vin gris (no skin contact, direct pressing)
Alcoholic fermentation: from a pied-de-cuve of wild yeast
Malolactic fermentation: spontaneous
Refining: 3 months on fine lees in stainless steel tanks
Average production: 10.000 bottles/year

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HOW LA BAMBINA WAS BORN

It all started from my desire to experiment something different with Nero d'Avola grapes: I wanted it to be single varietal, and also wanted it to show character and freshness, but my older vineyard, planted on dark clay soil, would give me a tannic and structured juice that was not suitable for the wine I had in mind.

Then, in 2007, I had the chance to plant a new vineyard.
When I selected the site, in an area that we call "La Costa", a clay-calcareous soil was just perfect to supply sufficient minerals to the vines, that would lead to a higher level of natural acidity and to finer, subtler aromas. The first vintage brought just a few grapes, enough to see that those new vines would be able to produce very good crops in the future.

After the harvest, I went to the United States for my usual trade tour. Imagine the scene: dinner with my importer, many bottles on the table - a couple of whites, then a few reds from Piedmont to Tuscany. We were chatting, and discussing wine and life.

At the end of the dinner, after coffee and amaro (Fernet, of course), David walked downstairs and got back with a bottle of rosé. I argued that my taste buds were not able to feel anything after all that we had tasted... And he goes like: you can drink rosé either to prepare your palate, or to clean your palate, so this is just the right time if you feel you are done!

Here it is: that Californian vin gris, a delicious, fragrant, bright wine. A sudden, overwhelming great love.

When I got home from the States, the first thing I did was to tell mom that I was going to make a rosé. Of course she showed zero enthusiasm: there were very few rosé wines around, especially in Sicily, and we did not need a wine that was going to be hard to sell.
Anyway: the vineyard was young and it would not give great reds for a while, so I managed to convince her to at least try, with a solemn promise that it would be my first and last time.

So here I am, in 2009, waiting for 3 tons of grapes eventually become wine, in a neverending fermentation that lasts 18 days. The guys in the cellar laugh at my anxiety. Every day I measure the residual sugar, and despair because it has not gone down enough, and they keep asking: isn't the baby born yet?
When my baby finally finished the fermentation we celebrated as if a little girl had really been born, with a pink ribbon on the steel tank and a tray of cannoli. The baby girl aka La Bambina: so simple, and such a perfect name… everybody voted for it!

Year after year my Baby Rose has grown up, exactly like the vineyard where she comes from - becoming more intense, juicy and delicious, and giving us beautiful moments to share with friends and loved ones.

WINEMAKING

The Nero d'Avola was planted in 2007 in the Eastern part of Belicello, where gentle slopes are made of a clay-calcareus terrain rich in limestones that anciently belonged to the sea bottom. It's a deep soil of medium texture and a good drainage that shows a yellowish color with lighter fractions. Its amazing content in sea minerals grants the grapes a pleasant complexity, a good structure and full aromatic development.
The Frappato is 10 years younger: it enriches the wine's color and aromas, while also enhancing its acidity.

Both grapes usually get ripe about the first week of September. I usually pick a few days in advance, to preserve fresher and more delicate aromas, which are a distinctive feature of La Bambina rosé wine.
Immediately brought to the winery, the grapes are destemmed as fast as possible and the berries are softly pressed with no skin contact: light color and freshness are preserved by decanting the must in stainless steel tanks, and the fermentation starts from a pied-de-cuve of wild yeast.
The wine is then refined sur lie for a few months: the lees are manually stirred every week, in order to reach a satisfying degree of proteic stability with no additives nor fining agents.

FOOD PAIRING

La Bambina is a very versatile wine: it is just perfect on a warm summer night, or during a wine party with your best friends. It's a great aperitivo with peanuts and dried pistachios, and a good companion for the whole meal with rice salads, grilled vegetables, soft cheeses and fish.
My favorite combination is with red tuna-fish sushi, where the savory taste of the spicy wasabi sauce perfectly marries the smooth, juicy texture of the wine.

La Bambina gives also a fantastic allure to your night-club style parties: try four different versions of classic cocktails, and all of them are very easy to prepare, check the recipes here.

SERVING TEMPERATURE: 46 - 50 °F
Pour your glass of Bambina in classic white wine glasses, at fresh-but-not-chilled temperature: freezing a wine bottle is never a good idea, especially if you are drinking a natural wine, because ice-cold temperatures may cause tartaric precipitations that are not nice to see in your glass.
An easy tip to quickly refrigerate your wine? A champagne bucket, lots of ice cubes and 15 minutes of patience.

EASY MENFI

TERROIR

HAND MADE

TRADITION

LA BAMBINA

THE SHORT STORY

HOW LA BAMBINA WAS BORN

WINEMAKING

FOOD PAIRING

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