It’s the season for gifts and shiny special things, a season of traditions and legends, so I thought to bring you something special. Something that shines like gold; smells of frankincense and myrrh and panettone; is the gift of time and craft; and is steeped in story and tradition. It’s a dessert wine called Torcolato, which is not a brand name but the name of a special, labour-intensive and rather unique passito method of making dessert wine in the little DOC of Breganze.
Breganze (more or less in the heart of the Veneto, tucked into the Alpine foothills) has been a DOC since 1969, its 324 ha (800 acres) producing around 9,000 hl (238,000 gallons) of wine. But it doesn’t get much attention. So I was intrigued to get a chance, recently, to taste a handful of wines from Maculan, who own 50 ha (125 acres) in the DOC. Their red wines were remarkably good, but I was intrigued by their Torcolato.
Breganze is the home of Vespaiolo, a grape variety which Wine Grapes describes as ‘an ancient variety from the province of Vicenza, but little is known about its origin and history’. There are barely 100 ha (250 acres) of it in the world, and most of them are in Vicenze and most of them in Breganze. Its high acidity, even when very ripe, makes it a good candidate for use in dry, sparkling and sweet wines, but it’s at its best as a sweet wine. In fact, as far back as 1610, the 17th-century writer and traveller Andrea Scotto was singing the praises of the ‘famous’ sweet wines of Breganze, and in 1754, an oenological guide of Vicenza written by Aureliano Acanti notes the ‘sweet Vespaiuolo [sic] … excellent liquor that is factory in Breganze’.*
Torcolato must be made with 100% Vespaiolo. The grapes are picked ripe, but not late-harvested. Instead, the bunches, which have to be very carefully hand-picked and sorted to ensure there is not a damaged grape in sight, are gently twisted (torcere is the Italian ‘to twist’, hence Torcolato) with string into a vertical column called a rosolo. The rosoli are hung from the roof of special drying rooms for up to four months, grapes turning to raisins, which are then very slowly pressed and even more slowly fermented (usually in stainless-steel tanks). Fermentation can sometimes take several months and usually comes to an end when the yeasts simply give up, leaving the wine naturally sweet. The wine must be aged for at least a year (two years for Riserva) – some producers age it in stainless steel, others in oak.
There are only 14 producers of Torcolato in Breganze (so make that ‘the world’), and Maculan is responsible for 50% of production. Maculan’s latest release, the 2022, is a deep toffee colour and is seductively aromatic. It’s sweet (150 g/l of residual sugar), but it’s also strangely not sweet. It has whorls of fresh fruit (mango, passion fruit, apricot), whorls of dried fruit and candy (marron glacé, fig conserve, succade), whorls of spice and savoury (nutmeg, roast chestnuts, Darjeeling tea). It’s intense but not cloying, concentrated but wonderfully fresh, and comes with a soft rasp of tannins which only adds to its length, depth and drinkability.
Tasting this prompted an excursion to find panettone, which turned out to be sinfully good with the wine, and then I saw Rachel Roddy’s spectacular recipe for certosino di Bologna, a fruit-and-nut cake which looks very do-able, and immediately wished I’d tried that instead (too late – a flock of greedy starlings had swept into my kitchen and already devoured the wine). Sticking to yuletide themes but moving westwards, it was also very, very good with mince pies and blue cheese. I can imagine it would be a rather lovely sip alongside a slice of pecan pie. It is, after all, a slice of history in a glass. And a tradition worth preserving.
I tasted the 2022, but 19 years ago Jancis tasted the 2003 and the (then) 24-year-old 1981, and they seemed to be just as delicious back then, with a remarkable propensity to age. If all you can get your hands on is an older vintage, you’ll be fine and so will the wine.
It’s imported into the UK by Berkmann Wine Cellars, and Vino.com is selling half-bottles of the 2022 for £23.10 while Vinvm has 75-cl bottles for £47.10. The 2022 hasn’t made its way to the US yet, although I am assured that it will, but you can find the 2021 and older vintages in Rhode Island, Colorado, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina, starting from $24.99 per half or $36.98 per bottle. It’s also available in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and even Ukraine.
* 'factory' is the word translated from the original 18th-century text, as quoted by the Firmino Miotti winery.
The photo at the top of this article is the author's own. All other images are sourced from and published here by kind permission of the Maculan family.
