Adress: Via Roccat e Ferrari, 17 31049 Valdobbiadene (Treviso) ITALIA
Country: Italy
internet: http://www.canevel.it
Wine district: Veneto
wines
This is where Canevel Spumanti comes into being - at the heart of the company, a modern winery, with machinery and avant-garde facilities and expertise that enable us to continue our tradition of quest for ever increasing excellence in the production of the Spumante Valdobbiadene and Conegliano.
The new headquarters of Canevel Sparkling Wines is in Valdobbiadene in the hamlet of Saccol, in a completely restored building, equipped to meet all functional requirements, from the grape harvest to vinification, from bottling to storing the products and to delivery to clients, wine mechants and restaurants. The process is controlled at every phase, in order to guarantee that our sparkling wines are of the best quality.
The grapes are gathered and taken to the winery in 2 kg boxes, and are transferred to the presses by means of a conveyor belt so that they are kept as intact as possible.
The pressing process, defined as soft because it is kept at rather low levels - around 1.6 - 1.8 bar- lasts about two hours during which time every kilogram of grapes yields about 0.70/0.75 litres of wine, depending on the year.
The must obtained is chilled immediately to a temperature of 3° C to inhibit any processes of spontaneous fermentation and is then conveyed to one of the 50 collection tanks in the winery.
The tanks are small and plentiful so that the musts can be split according to their provenance, quality, maturation and any other criteria the wine-maker may consider important.
The first fermentation, that is also to say the transformation of the sugars in the grapes into alcohol and carbon dioxide by means of yeasts selected by us, is cheked inside the tank. Working temperatures are constantly monitored. The result of this process of vinification will be wines with a low alcohol content of about 8 degrees which are the basis for our sparkiling wines because the Co2 produced during this phase is released into the environment through openings at the top of the tanks. These wines are decanted, filtered, always at controlled temperatures and then kept until they are required. In fact, although vinification occurs immediately after harvesting during autumn, the second phase can be provoked at any time during the year. This is the Sparkling Process, that is to say, the second fermentation triggered by adding more yeast which will metabolise the residual sugars and thereby produce the final degrees of alcohol, stabilising the alcohol content at about 11.5% Vol. Carbon dioxide will also be produced, but this time it will not be dispersed but will remain in the autoclaves increasing pressure until integrated with the wines.
This is where the insight of the Martinotti method comes in. Unlike the French who bottle their basic wines and wait for the second fermentation to occur inside the bottle (the so-called "classic" or "champenoise method"), Martinotti induces the sparkling processes in one large air-tight tank: an autoclave. It prevents the carbon dioxide from escaping and dispersing. Raising the internal pressure up to 7-8 bar induces the phenomenon known as "presa di spuma", the prise de mousse or second fermentation, in other words the integration of CO2 with the liquids. After at least the thirty days required by the rules and regulations for the development of this process, the sparkling wine is filtered one more time, and is then bottled with a special bottling machine that is able to mantain constant pressure and to reduce residual oxygen to values close to zero. The wine is then ready to drink.
Compared with fermentation in bottles, an autoclave drastically reduces time and therefore costs.
The Martinotti method is particularly indicated for aromatic grapes, like the glera of Valdobbiadene Conegliano, because it allows the sparkling wines to preserve their primary scents. These grapes do not have the right structure to allow them to keep over time. They are therefore drunk young (in most cases, this means within a year), so, materially, there would not be enough time to expose them to a longer period of fermentation. Bottles require several months to complete the second fermentation, stripping the wine of the main scents of the grapes that at this stage need to develop different and more enduring characteristics. The sparkling wines resulting from fermentation using the classic method are heavily dependent on the yeast used, and on the topping up that is made before final corking. But they have always been considered better quality because of their longevity. The qualities that are the hallmark of glera are different - it is a light and fragrant wine, and the Martinotti method guarantees a sparkling process that enhances its youth, its scents and it s brightness.
