Founded in 1925 in the heart of Verona, Pasqua Vigneti e Cantine has spent the last century evolving from a traditional family winery into a self-styled “House of the Unconventional”.
Here in Azzurra Restaurant, Cecilia Pasqua is taking some important wine writers (and me) through a showcase tasting of some of the family’s wines, along with some great food, of course.
No traditional winery, Pasqua sees itself as an ongoing challenge to traditional Italian winemaking rules, and has been doing so for a hundred years. It is a key ambassador for the Veneto region. It also is involved heavily in the arts, investing over €6 million since 2018 in contemporary arts and collaborations including the Saatchi Gallery.
Their focus is very much on Gen Z drinkers, choosing not to use boring excess detail or dull imagery. It is, as they acknowledge, something of a Marmite approach, love it or loathe it, but it works for them
The first wine we try is their Y by 11 Minutes Rosé. Cecilia explains the name relates to the precise duration of skin contact during the pressing of its grapes. This rather short time is just enough to impart a delicate pale-pink hue and subtle aromatics to the wine.
It’s a blend of Corvina 60%, Trebbiano 30$, Syrah, and Carmenère 10-15%, grown near Lake Garda. It is characterised by floral aromas, bright acidity, and a refreshing finish. It makes a refreshing change to the usual Provence rosé, the ageing in French oak, brings in complex notes of red fruit, citrus, vanilla, and toast. Definitely a wine to produce at your garden parties this year. We matched it with red prawn and a mini meatball.
I have to say I am not a great fan of gimmicky wine names and labels, a habit I think the Australians started. Yes it makes the wine stand out, but it may also lack gravitas and you need to be careful about that when your wine costs around £30 a bottle
So this ‘Hey French – You Could Have Made This But You Didn’t’ is treading very close to the edge. Or it would seem so, that is until you taste it.
It’s a multi vintage wine Garganega 80% Pinot Blanc 10% Sauvignon Blanc 10% of Garganega, Pinot Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc, it’s made from grapes from the six best vintages of the decade, 2015 to 2020. The grapes are macerated on their skins for about 10 hours, followed by alcoholic fermentation, Part of the wine also undergoes malolactic fermentation to add roundness.
The wine gets to rest second-passage barriques and tonneaux for six months, and then aged in steel tanks. Rather a lot of work, but it does create a remarkable wine. The name may be blatant trolling of the French, but what’s behind the label is excellent.
I have always had a bit of a snobbish attitude to Valpolicella, for some reason I associate it with cheap nasty wine in cheap and nasty Italian restaurants. The next wine changed my mind.
Mizzole Valpolicella Superiore Doc is a blend of Corvina 60% Corvinone 25% Rondinella 10% and Oseleta 5% grapes. It’s made with the traditional ripasso method where the wine is refermented on Amarone pomace. The result is lovely dark fruit flavors, and a warm smooth feel with hints of chocolate drifting about. The colour is intense.
Finally we tried Pasqua + Smith Pinot Noir. Washington wine producer Charles Smith is said to be one of the most original and disruptive voices in the US wine industry, he certainly looks different. Like Pasqua he likes to stand out, sometimes in a banal way such as labelling a wine Sex, but then he was once the manager of a rock band. Pasqua are now distributing the House of Smith portfolio of wines, it seems a good match.
The wine itself is gorgeous. After fermentation they divide the wine in two and age one part tonneaux for two years and the other one in barriques for a year. They then blend in steel for 2–3 months to stabilise before bottling.
It’s quite chunky at 13.5% with an appealing spicy nose. The oak doesn’t intrude and the wine feels fresh with mild tannins. Easy drinking can often sound like a criticism, but here it isn’t
Well worth a mention is the Sangue d’Oro, a dessert wine that comes from Pantelleria in the south of Sicily. The winery was founded by French actress Carole Bouquet in partnership with Pasqua Wines and it uses the Zibibbo (Moscato di Alessandria) grape so famous in Sicily ( you can read more about the new world of Sicilian DOC wines here).
Oro means ‘gold’ of course and the wine certainly does what it says on the tin. Sangue D’Oro Passito di Pantelleria DOC is 100% Zibibbo produced in Contrada Serraglia, in terraced vineyards protected from the wind by dry stone walls. A gorgeous dessert wine that was paired with a giant caper perched on the rim. A small bite of this followed by a sip of the wine was delicious.
Pasqua is about to enter its second century, still blending historical expertise with a modern stylistic vision.
Their range of wines is really enormous and their thirst for good wine, unmatched.
Pasqua ‘Y’ by 11 Minutes Organic Rosé 2021/22 – £23.00 from Majestic
For more information about Pasqua Wines and its full wine collection visit www.pasqua.it
Main image David Pearce