Tour of Berlucchi Franciacorta operations and Palazzo Lana Berlucchi

The evening before the the Berlucchi tour had been devoted to the Grand Finale Dinner of the 2011 European Wine Bloggers Conference and an "after party" but we were all at the appointed meeting place in the heart of Old Brescia at the appointed time.  As sleepy as I was, I wished the buses would be there on time so that I could catch a quick snooze en route.  No such luck.  The buses showed up eventually and we boarded and wended our way out of Brescia and onto the Autostrada Milano-Brescia in a northwesterly direction.  We exited the Autostrada at Via Provinciale and travelled due north to Borgonato and the Berlucchi facility.

We were welcomed outside the winery by a large group which included Arturo Ziliani, Vice President and Chief Winemaker and Cristina Ziliani, Head of Public Relations, Communications, and Image.  Cristina did most of the speaking at this time and informed us that we had been tardy and would have to hurry in order to complete the appointed program.  Headsets were distributed to us as we made our way into the winery and positioned ourselves in a semicircle around Arturo and, as he explained, his translator.  Hence the headsets.

When we had settled down, Arturo utilized a presentation on a large flat screen TV to explain the estate's viticultural and vinicultural practices.  He was especially proud of the company's Coquard presses.  According to www.winenews.it, these presses are insatiable and, further, "A fast and efficient press avoids the insurgence of uncontrolled microbiological processes that occur among the grapes in the crate. The Coquard's inclined plate favors the rapid descent of musts, thus clarifying the wine with this first natural filtration while at the same time limiting the time in contact with the skins."  The pressure exerted on the grapes by the press can be automatically adjusted based on its reading of pre-set parameters.  According to Arturo, every major Champagne House utilizes this technology but Berlucchi was the first non-French estate to acquire it.

After completing our tour of the vinification facility, we re-boarded our bus for the trip over to the cellar and Palazzo Lana Berlucchi.   We were warmly welcomed there by another staff contingent and taken on a tour of the cellars where the wines are bottled for re-fermenting and aging after assemblage.  Depending on the wine style, a bottle can spend anywhere from 18 to 60 months in the Berlucchi cellar.  Berlucchi still uses some manual riddling to concentrate the spent yeast into the neck of the bottle but has supplanted it with machines for the most part.  Automatic riddling, via the gyro palette, was developed by the Cava industry in the 1970s and has been adopted by traditional sparkling wine makers the world over.  The method can reduce the riddling time to as little as three days in comparison to an average of six weeks for a hand-riddled wine.

As Arturo explained it, the pressure in a Franciacorta bottle is six atmospheres (with the exception of Satén which is bottled at 5 atmospheres of pressure).  He demonstrated that this pressure is contained within the wine itself by opening a bottle, placing it on a flat surface, and then tapping gently on the outside of the bottle with a metal object.  The resulting eruption of wine was a sight to behold.

Our tour was actually conducted in reverse to the construction and maturation processes in that we started with the bottles at rest, went next to the remuage process, on to the bottling facility, and then ended at the base-wine tasting room.  In the base-wine tasting room we were allowed to taste a number of base wines from different lots, different vintages, and different varieties.  In the actual assemblage of the wine, a four-person tasting team, to include Arturo, convenes to determine the composition of the estate's offerings.

At the conclusion of the cellar tour, we were taken over to Palazzo Lana Berlucchi, the early 16th century chateau that nests alongside the cellar, for a tour and light repast.  The delicate finger foods to which we were treated paired exquisitely with the array of wines to which we were treated.  While in the palace, Arturo revealed a special, wine-blogger-specific bottling of a "61 Franciacorta and said that we would take it outside to the vineyards and crack it open.  And so we did.

All in all a wonderful day.  The management and staff at Berlucchi were kind, attentive, and informative.  The ongoing back and forth between Arturo and Cristina exhibited a fun, close familial relationship.  The knowledge and passion of Arturo for Berlucchi and Franciacorta were on display for all to see.  If there was one disappointment it was that Franco Ziliani, the father of Franciacorta, was too sick to meet with us on the day of our visit.  But no matter, his spirit was in every glass that I drank that day.  And every glass that I have drunk since.

Guido Berlucchi: Franciacorta's leading light

On the final day of the 2011 European Wine Bloggers Conference, a number of bloggers participated in a tour of the winemaking facilities of Franciacorta powerhouse Guido Berlucchi.  Our hosts for the tour were Arturo Ziliani, Vice President and Chief Winemaker and Cristina Ziliani, Head of Public Relations, Communications, and Image.  Key elements of the estate's genesis and operations are highlighted in this post.

Guido Berlucchi was founded in 1955 by Guido Berlucchi, Franco Ziliani and Giorgio Lanciani.  Guido Berlucchi was a gentleman farmer in Borgonato who produced an unstable, still white wine called Pinot del Castello.  His search for a solution to the wine's stability problems led him to Franco Ziliani, a recent graduate of the Alba Winemaking Institute.  Ziliani solved the stability problem and then promptly turned to enlisting Berlucchi's assistance in the attainment of his goal of making a sparkling wine in the Franciacorta area. Berlucchi signed on and they were joined by Giorgio Lanciani.  After years of effort, Ziliani finally produced 3000 bottles of quality sparkling wine in 1961.  This wine was called Pinot di Franciacorta, the first time that the word Franciacorta had appeared on a wine label in Italy.

Grapes for the Berlucchi wines are sourced from 600 hectares of estate and grower vineyards.  The climate and soil extant in the Franciacorta region have been described previously, as was the University of Milan zonation study which detailed the soil characteristics.  In a project called the 1001 Vineyard Project, Berlucchi has extended the University of the Milan zonation study to divide its vineyards into over 215 different lots.  Vineyards on these plots are spur-cordon trained and planted to high density and, combined with practices such as the use of cover crops and green harvesting, are designed to produce low yields of high-quality grapes.

The technological sophistication of the Berlucchi organization is on display in the way in which the vineyards are managed.  At the beginning of the growing season, the vineyards are mapped -- using infrared technology on satellites or drones -- to determine vegetative vigor.  As the grapes ripen, they are sampled according to the mapped zones and harvesting decisions are driven by the results.

Grapes for the Berlucchi wines are hand-harvested on a lot-by-lot basis by over 1000 pickers.  Careful harvesting is designed to retain the freshness and flavors of the grapes.  The grapes are loaded onto eight inclined-plane presses in intact bunches and are then delicately pressed to release the must.  The wines are vinified by lot with initial fermentation in stainless steel tanks or, in some cases, oak barriques.  Some of the wines undergo malolactic fermentation in oak barrels.  The result of the vinification process is 200 base wines some of which undergo bâttonage in order to stir up the lees.

In the winter following the harvest, the wines are blended then bottled.  They are held in the cellar -- a 17th-century structure that is 10-meters underground -- for 18-60 months while they re-ferment and mature.

Berlucchi produces approximately 5,000,000 bottles of sparkling wine per year.  The company's portfolio of wines is shown in the table below.