Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero Schweizer 2017 - Franz Haas

Color: Ruby red with garnet reflections.
Smell: The nose seduces with complex and layered fruit aromas, such as ripe berries and cherries, spicy notes of pepper and leather.
Taste: On the palate the wine excites with its enveloping tannins, with elegance and finesse, rich in aromas perceived on the nose and long persistence.
Food pairing: Perfect for game, such as pheasant and duck, for braised game, red meats and aged cheeses.

Breeding system: Guyot.
Altitude: Between 350 and 700 meters.
Soil: Silty soils are located just a few meters from soils of different composition including sandy, limestone and gravelly.
Exposure: South and Southwest.
Vinification: The grapes are vinified in open tanks in which the fermenting must comes into contact with the skins through frequent pumping over and punching down.
By these techniques the coloring substances and the aromas contained in the peel are extracted and pass on to the wine.
At the end of fermentation, the wine then passes from steel to barriques where malolactic fermentation takes place.
Aging: Maturation for 12 months in barrique, after bottling the wine ages for about a year in the bottle.

Franz Haas

The Franz Haas Wineryhas endeavoured to show the wines it produces always in the best light. It was established in 1880 and has been handed down through the generations up to now to a Franz Haas. Around 55 vine-planted hectares are worked, subdivided among owners, renters and assignees. Franz Haas has always been recognised as a great enthusiast and cultivator of themost difficult vine, one that is the most sensitive and repays the greatest: the Pinot Nero. Not withstanding all the attention, the brainpower, the work, the product isn’t always at the same level as its origins, so the selection of the Pinot Noir, called "Schweizer“, isn’t always put on the market. Another detail that makes Franz Haas stand out is the collaboration with the artist Riccardo Schweizer, who designed the labels. He actually painted together with Picasso, Chagall, Cocteau, Paul Éluard oder Le Corbusier. All the labels were given to Franz by Maria Luisa Manna, as a good omen when he released his wines. The first label Franz chose was the fashionable Pinot Nero Schweizer label, whose first year was ’87, but released in ’90. Twenty-one years ago, much more traditional, simple labels were used, then the black and gold label came out, and as simple as it was, it certainly had an impact. But apart from the quality of the wine, people began to appreciate this type of label a lot, and even today, twenty years on, they stand out and are remembered on wine shop shelves and restaurant tables. The vineyards are all concentrated in the municipalities of Egna, Montagna and Aldino. They start at an altitude of 240 meters and today they reach 1.150 meters above sea level, with an enormous variability of microclimates and soils, from porphyritic sand to fine clay to soil with a high calcium content. During 2000, because of the progressing climate change, several hectares were rented, at altitudes up to 850m above sea level. Ten years on, the decision to plant vines at these heights has been optimal for production of long-lasting wines, fragrant and decidedly acidic owing to the good temperature range and four our of sunlight a day. The last vineyard, Pinot Noir, was even planted at an altitude of 1.150 meters above sea level.