Il Terzo Grado "The Juice Asylum" Vino Rosso, 2018

90% Sangiovese, 10% Merlot.  The finished product has great energy and freshness with cool cherry sorbet fruits, violet petal and blackurrant acidity. It is delicious, fun, and funky made with minimal intervention in a light a super juicy style. 

The Juice Asylum is a project started in 2016 by Alessio Guidi at Avignonesi Winery. Being a fanatic on all things quirky, interesting and above all terroir driven, he embraces the idea of allowing wine to have an experimental playground where the natural element is encouraged rather than denied and put into a ‘facility’ (an Asylum, if you will) for correction. Since so much time is spent on the selection of the grapes (sourced from biodynamic or organic vineyards at Avignonesi Winery) the idea is to use minimal intervention, co-fermentation and different styles of ageing to allow the wine to speak of where it is from rather than be ‘made’.

Sangiovese from Montepulciano and Merlot from Cortona are hand picked simultaneously, with the Merlot adding its full ripeness to the early picked tones of the Sangiovese. Both varieties are co-fermented in stainless steel semi-carbonically and with the use of indigenous yeasts and a small percentage (approximately 20%) of whole clusters. The juice spends 3 days on it's skins and then aged for 5 months in stainless steel. It has not been fined or filtered and is bottled without the addition of sulphates.

PAIR WITH ROAST CHICKEN, CLASSIC FRIDAY PIZZA NIGHT, RED SAUCE ITALIAN, EGGPLANT.