italian wine - The Michael Pour

Wine Spotlight: A Sparkling Taste of Veneto

May

2026

This week’s wine spotlight highlights a great style of sparkling wine from Italy called Prosecco. Have you heard of it? For this discussion, I chose a fantastic Prosecco emanating from its home in the Veneto region.

I recently sampled it when I was tasting some bubbly for a wine list I was constructing for a new wine bar called The Lucky Dog Bistro. It sure was a palate pleaser and I thought it would be a perfect sparkling addition to the menu. Thank you to Sarah from Soilair Selection for the awesome recommendation.

Isotta Manzoni ‘Cuvée Giuliana’ Prosecco (NV) is a crisp, value-driven, small production, sparkling wine from Italy’s Veneto region. Made 100% from the Glera grape, it is light, slightly acidic, and on the ‘fizzier’ side of prosecco making it very refreshing and ideal for mimosas or casual sipping.

The production is the Charmat (tank) method, which preserves fresh, fruity characteristics with a second fermentation. Sourced from vineyards nestled in the hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, and produced by fourth-generation winemakers. The fermentation is 25 days in stainless steel tanks and then aged for 1 month in stainless steel tanks. The result is larger bubbles.

Cuvée in the name is a French wine term derived from cuve (meaning “vat” or “tank”). Depending on the context, it typically indicates a specially selected blend of multiple grape varieties, a winery’s premium or reserve batch, especially in Champagne, or the purest “first-press” juice extracted from grapes.

The Cuvée Giuliana is the standard, widely available Brut-style Prosecco. The Prosecco Rosé version is a delicate, dry rosé expression that features light notes of red berries, strawberries, and cream. This was also added to the wine list.

It is a well-balanced Prosecco with delicate and expressive aromas showing a good blend of crisp green and baked apple, sour lemon and grapefruit with a light, soft, silky and creamy mousse texture on the palate.

As you go back into the glass, some notes of pear and white peach appear on the nose followed by hints of apple and citrus. The Isotta Prosecco has a fair amount of body and mouthfeel with a pleasant lemon and mineral finish.

It’s refreshing acidity and elegant bubbles make it an incredibly versatile pairing option. It goes wonderfully with everything, including fresh seafood, shellfish, prosciutto/cured meats, vegetarian dishes, brunch favorites like eggs benedict or light pastries. Bon appétit!

The Isotta Manzoni Prosecco and Rosé version is now available at The Lucky Dog Bistro in downtown Clinton, NY where you can enjoy it at the beautiful new wine bar with inside and outside seating or in the restaurant. Try it in the special mimosas on the weekend. Hopefully I will see you there! Find them on Instagram @luckydogbistro and here About | The Lucky Dog Bistro.

Ancient Romans drank Prosecco to preserve youth and lengthen life. And based on how long the empire lasted, it may just work. Prosecco is a great alternative to Champagne and generally contains less alcohol. Every year, one bottle of Prosecco is produced for every 2 people in the US. That’s a lot of bubbles! It is currently in the top 25 of Italian Prosecco wines in New York and one of the popular wines distributed with Soilair Selection out of NYC.

A lovely, somewhat less popular, and often less expensive comparison to Champagne, Prosecco is a deliciously dry sparkling wine with crisp acidity, low sugar, with plenty of fruit and character. Associated with high value at low cost, Prosecco is the perfect option in situations where you want or need a easy drinking, everyday sparkling wine.

Traditionally from the Veneto (northeastern Italy), Prosecco refers to the name for a small village and is fermented almost solely from a grape called Glera. Most Prosecco is non-vintage, which means it doesn’t come with a year of production on the label.

This wine is not made in the traditional method of champagne with riddling, disgorging, rebottling, etc…, which, combined with non-vintage production, makes the wine more affordable than champagne minus the labor intensity. Prosecco is often described as a fresher and fruitier option than the French sparkler.

A few fun facts –

Styles of Prosecco – ‘Spumante’ means fully sparkling while ‘frizzante’ means lightly sparkling. It is rare but some Prosecco is a still wine, not sparkling.

“Extra Dry” Prosecco is actually sweeter than “Brut”. “Dry” is the sweetest of the three. This sweetness scale from dry to sweet: Brut – Extra Dry – Dry.

Prosecco isn’t a grape. The grape used to be called Prosecco, but it isn’t anymore. In 2009, Italy officially renamed the grape ‘Glera’ so that Prosecco could be protected as a place name rather than a grape variety. By law, Prosecco must contain at least 85% of the Glera grape.

Cheers & Sante,

Michael, michael@michaelpour.com

Cantina di Rosina: A Majestic Slice of Abruzzo

May

2026

by Michael Nagy

For this week’s spotlight, The Michael Pour takes you on a journey to Southern Italy along the coast of the Adriatic Sea.

Here you will find one of Italy’s best kept secrets and underrated wine regions, Abruzzo “uh-brut-sow”. Recently, I’ve learned about a new winery emerging in the region. The winery is called “Cantina di Rosina” and their wonderful story, and family history is depicted below.

“Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, our ancestors produced quality wine in the Southern Abruzzo region of Italy. After WWI, our grandparents emigrated from war-torn Italy to the US in search of a better life for their family. Now, 100 years later, they have returned to my beautiful ancestral village of Carunchio to carry on producing wines that are approachable, elegant, and capture the spirit of this stunning region. Carunchio is a commune and town in the province of Chieti in the Abruzzo region of Italy.

They’ve assembled a world-class team of viticulturists, oenologists, and winemakers to pay tribute to this beautiful land and all it has to offer. Great wine begins with great respect for the land. Our ongoing mission to share the beauty of Abruzzo with the world…one glass at a time.” – John, my Friend & Proprietor

Cantina di Rosina’s first vintage was 2024. Their Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2024 is described as being sturdy with solid structure, yet soft tannins with a long finish. It spends some time in concrete creating complexity and texture before going into stainless steel (no oak).

Flavors of dark cherry, leather, and hibiscus are exhibited. It will pair well with any type of game, grilled red meats, cured meats, and ripe cheeses. Serve it at cellar temp or slightly below room temp at 60°- 65°F. Don’t hold onto for very long.

The Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo is a bold rosé with a cherry red color from a gentle kiss of skin contact. With a maceration of only 4 hours on the skins before fermentation, the color is deep and vibrant. It is made 100% from the Montepulciano grape and is essentially a rosé that drinks like a red offering a full spectrum of food pairings.

Not your normal “pink” wine or rosé for that matter. It projects an intense aroma of rose petals and flavors of wild berries and a savory herbaceous quality that lingers. Try it as an aperitif! Drink young.

Enjoy it chilled (50°- 54°F) all summer long by itself or with an array of food options, like seafood dishes, roasted white meats, pizza, cured meats, and semi-matured cheeses. I experienced this awesome wine with homemade bucatini pasta, blush sauce, andouille sausage, shrimp, and fresh herbs over the weekend, and it was a lovely pairing.

The Trebbiano d’Abruzzo DOC 2024 will be released in the next few weeks so you can enjoy all summer-long.

All the wines are 100% certified organic with sustainable farming practices. I have tried the wines, and they are very clean, bright, and complex.

A little bit about the Abruzzo region to better understand the land, microclimate, vineyards, and what goes into the wine that is produced here.

Abruzzo is an Italian region located about a two-hour drive east of Rome. Abruzzo extends from the snow-capped Apennine Mountains to the balmy Adriatic Sea. This magical scenic region offers summits and seacoast, medieval castles and clifftop villages.

It is a major wine region famous for robust Montepulciano d’Abruzzo red wines and crisp Trebbiano d’Abruzzo whites. The region is characterized by mountainous terrain, with most production in the coastal Chieti province, offering high-value, quality wines often with soft tannins and red fruit flavors.

National parks and nature reserves cover much of its rugged interior. It also encompasses hilltop towns, dating to the medieval and Renaissance periods. The regional capital of L’Aquila is a walled city, which was damaged in a 2009 earthquake.

Abruzzo is also known as “the greenest region in Europe” as half of the region’s territory is protected through national parks and nature reserves, more than any other region in Italy. Culturally, Abruzzo is considered a region of Southern Italy; however, geographically it is often considered part of Central Italy.

The focus in Abruzzo is on the Montepulciano grape referred to as Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. It’s a versatile grape, in the sense that it can satisfy many different palates. Montepulciano is a fruit-forward dry red with a medium to full body, medium to high smooth tannins, and medium to high acidity. Notes of red plum, blackberry, dried herbs and thyme, and baking spices.

It is not be confused with Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, which is a wine made from the Sangiovese grape in the town of Montepulciano from the Tuscany region.

It can be vinified and aged in stainless steel to give a simple, approachable wine and food-friendly with freshness and expression of the fruit. For low crops, it can be aged in casks or barriques, sometimes new barriques, to create wines that have greater depth, concentration and complexity.

The oaked Montepulcianos coming out of the region are not wines for everyday drinking because they can be very dense, inky, and powerful. These bottlings can be a great option for the winter months. Some can develop gamey aromas with age while others continue to display primary fruit flavors for years.

Montepulciano does typically age well, but it’s not a wine that requires you to age in order to enjoy now and show complexity.

Montepulciano is the most planted grape in the Abruzzo region. It represents 80% of the total DOC wine produced in Abruzzo. The Montepulciano grape has been in Abruzzo since the mid 17th Century. According to DOC rules, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo wines must contain at least 85% Montepulciano, with Sangiovese often used for the rest. Bottles labeled “Riserva” must be aged at least two years.

Another reiteration of Montepulciano is Cerasuolo “chair-ah-swolo” which translates to “cherry red” and refers to an Italian wine style. It is Abruzzo’s best kept secret! Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo is a Rosé made from the Montepulciano grape. It is made from the free run juice and/or juice with very little skin contact and the color can vary from light pink to dark red. A rosé wine that is usually made by giving the juice a maceration of eight to 18 hours on the skins before fermentation.

The result is almost like a light red rather than a rosé. A wine with body and succulence not typically rosés. It’s very popular in the region, but you will not see many exported. However, that is starting to change though in recent years.

Even in a good pizzeria in the regional capital of Pescara, you don’t necessarily want to drink a rich red all the time. Cerasuolo, with its vinosity and weight, is actually best drunk lightly chilled. Most producers agree that you shouldn’t consider Cerasuolo a way to use up your least interesting grapes or put in a blend. It should be made from grapes of high quality and treated seriously even its rosé.

The signature white from Abruzzo is Trebbiano d’Abruzzo is a light white Italian wine known for its dark gold or amber-colored berries, high acidity and neutral flavor profile that produces stone fruit and apple aromas with hits of lemon. Though production remains small when compared to Montepulciano, it is starting to make an appearance on the world stage.

Being a very large and dispersed region of vineyards, Abruzzo is divided into many sub-regions, and there are also DOCs that are permitted to use non-Italian varieties such as Chardonnay or Merlot. Only someone who is an expert of Abruzzo terroir would be able to identify the many sub-zones for Montepulciano in the glass. Look for different styes of Sangiovese coming out of the region.

In many older regional vineyards, the vines are trained on tendone (pergolas) designed to shade the grape clusters and make harvest easier. Newer plantings are arranged in rows.

Tons of sunshine and generous rainfall provide happy growing conditions for wine grapes in Abruzzo. The higher elevations and combination of mountain and maritime breezes bring down summer temperatures, setting up conditions for warm days and chillier nights. This is ideal for maintaining acid balance in the ripeness. Most vineyards flow along the warm and dry coast in the nearby hills.

I am excited to be representing Cantina di Rosina winery as an ambassador in the Upstate and Central New York region so let me know if you want to schedule a tasting or place an order. Orders can be placed directly from their website or from my link in bio.

You can contact me, Michael Nagy, at 717.877.2729 or michael@cantinarosina.it The wines are truly remarkable by themselves but will also elevate your food experience and company.

If you have an Italian restaurant, steakhouse, pizzeria, or wine shop, these wines will be a perfect complement to your food menu and Italian wine section.

Allow me to share the beauty and story of Abruzzo and Cantina di Rosina (CdR) with you. Find the website at www.cantinarosina.it and on Instagram @cantinarosina. Follow them and me @themichaelpour 🙂

Cheers & Saluti,

Michael

Ramato Wines – 2021 Sun Goddess Pinot Grigio

March

2023

by Michael Nagy

Produced from the sun-kissed vineyards in Friuli Venezia Giulia, northeastern Italy, where the specific microclimate and the unique terroir to the Pinot Grigio grape.

Pinot Grigio is one of the most popular Italian wine styles and, while the grape shares the same genetic fingerprint with one of Alsace, France’s noble varieties, Pinot Gris, its different spelling and origination foreshadows unique styles of white wine. While Pinot Grigio has a distinctively Italian style, the grape hails from France, where it is called Pinot Gris, and is thought to have been introduced to Italy in the mid-19th century.

Eventually, the wine found success in the northeastern regions spanning Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige.

When Pinot Grigio grapes are crushed and the skins are allowed to spend time with the juice, a teasing, tactile texture and coppery hue results in a distinct wine style called ramato. It comes from the word ‘rame’ which means ‘copper’ in Italian.

Rosé and orange wines can also exhibit colors that range from pale pink to salmon to deep amber, as a result of skin contact. But color alone cannot determine the wine style.

What distinguishes ramato from a rosé or orange wine is that ramato is a product of historical winemaking style from Friuli, Italy, made with Pinot Grigio grapes.

Rosés are made from a number of black grapes and orange wines are made from white grapes throughout the world.

How are Ramato wines made?

How does ramato gets its copper color from Pinot Grigio?

Pinot Grigio is not a white-skinned grape at all – its skins have a rosy-grey tone, hence the name ‘gris’ or grigio, meaning grey in French and Italian respectively. Pinot Gris/Grigio is a color mutation of Pinot Noir and the berries have a pinkish, if not entirely ‘grey’ appearance. Pinot Grigio is an easy-going conventional white wine with neutral flavors, and ramato is the copper-hued Italian farmhouse style.

Ramato’s copper-like luster is attributed to the extended maceration of the must on the skins during the winemaking process. This also adds to its unique flavors, aromas, structural complexity and tannic mass. But color also comes from the natural pigments of the grapes that seep into the juice while they are still on the vine.

Some producers use short maceration to achieve fresh and lighter wines, which often have a slight peach look. Others do longer maceration, which yields richer, autumnal shades.

2021 Sun Goddess Pinot Grigio Ramato

100% Pinot Grigio, Friuli DOC, Tauriano Estate, Spilimbergo (PN, Italy)

Gravelly soil, 393 ft altitude in the foothills of the Dolomite mountains, vineyards’ average age is 25 years old, dry, alcohol 12.5%, acidity 5.40 g/L

The nose is intense and complex, with hints of peach, melon, and blackberry. On the palate, it is round, with a subdued acidity, soft tannins, and a rich, minerally finish. If you’ve never had a ramato wine or skin-fermented white wine, it is an acquired taste because it does have a noticeable tannic component. It is very different than a typical white wine. I find that red wine drinkers tend to gravitate toward this style.

Vinification – short maceration (contact with the skins for a few hours at cold temperatures) followed by fermentation via natural yeast in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks at 64°F. The wine matures in stainless steel tanks for 4 months.

Because of the added textural component that the skin contact provides, ramato wines made from Pinot Grigio are very food friendly. Perfect as an appetizer wine before the start of the main course. It goes well with many hors d’oeuvres, charcuterie, soups and risottos. Not recommended to be sipped during or after dinner.

Cheers,

Michael

Wine of the Week – 2020 Truffle Hunter Leda Barbera D’Asti

December

2022

by Michael Nagy

As a follow-up from the most recent blog post on pairing wine with ham, I give you a specific wine recommendation that I feel is a wonderful complement to your ham dinner, but also a wine that is perfect for the season and all year-long. This wine has a wonderful story attached to it, which is depicted on the bottle label. I will share this warm-hearted story with you along with more information about the wine.

In the Langhe, the soils that yield extraordinary wines are the same soils that give birth to the White Truffle of Alba, the world’s most prized underground mushroom, the “diamond of the earth.”

Truffle Hunter Leda is a pleasant and carefree sip, a celebration of one of the most generous territories in the world. It reveals a love for the sun-kissed and wind-cradled hills of Piedmont, recognized as a World Heritage Site, where the beauty of the landscape becomes the quality of a taste that is always recognizable.

Truffle Hunter Leda is the story of an overwhelming passion, that of Valter Bosio for truffle hunting, which, since childhood, has driven him to beat the woods and valleys of Piedmont in search of the most mysterious fruit of the earth. But it is also the story of a timeless bond, that with the legendary dog Leda, the partner of a thousand adventures, whose unerring nose guaranteed Valter exceptional finds and equally exceptional excitement. This wine is his tribute to the land of Piedmont, to the interweaving of incredible excellence that this land makes possible.

Leda has been a faithful companion to the Bosio family for 14 years and is legendary for her ability to hunt truffles. The family named this wine in her honor so her legacy and story will live on each time a bottle is opened and a glass is toasted. Leda is a Lagotto Romagnolo, a breed of dog that comes exclusively from the Romagna sub-region of Italy. Luca Bosio Vineyards, now in its 3rd generation, was established in 1967 by farmers Egidio and Angela. Their son, Valter Bosio married Rosella and along with their son Luca, a graduate winemaker, work tirelessly to keep up the family tradition. Luca has brought a wave of freshness and novelty both in technical and commercial areas. After the success of his innovative and progressive ideas, and under the constant support of the family, the company has taken the name of Luca Bosio Vineyards. The winery is located in the center of the Langhe region of Piedmont and has 60 acres of vineyards.

The Piedmont of wine is a continuous discovery, an endless revelation of oenological expressions on the hunt for ever-changing native grape varieties capable of telling an intimate and authentic story. An invitation to be part of the great land that gives rise to the White Truffle and, at the same time, to the world’s greatest wines.

The 2020 vintage began with a winter season characterized by mid temperatures and little rainfall. In general, the climatic trend was ideal. The Barbera grapes for this wine come from vineyards located in Castagnole Lanze and Costighole d’Asti villages, at 200-300 feet above sea level. The average age of the vines is 25 years old and they are grown on calcareous clay soil. After harvesting, the grapes are pressed and the must is fermented in temperature-controlled steel tanks. Skin maceration takes place over six days, assuring good color and body. The wine spends 6 months in large oak barrels to increase the body and the structure leading to red fruits, hint of chocolate, and spice notes due from the wood. This is followed by an additional six months in the bottle before releasing.

Ruby red in color, this Barbera shows ample red fruit on the nose. The wine sits at 13.5% alcohol, 5 g/L residual sugar (not bone dry by any means), and 5.4 g/L acidity (significant for the warm climate and for red grapes). It has silky tannins that give it a smooth mouthfeel.

This “easy-to-drink” wine has a freshness and approachability that makes it a great wine for even the casual wine consumer and non-red wine drinker.

Keep following! Bookmark this page if you want to stay updated. Look for weekly blog posts and navigate the site for information on wine tastings and services.

Happy Holidays!

Cheers, Michael

Tag: italian wine

Wine Spotlight: A Sparkling Taste of Veneto

Cantina di Rosina: A Majestic Slice of Abruzzo

Ramato Wines – 2021 Sun Goddess Pinot Grigio

How are Ramato wines made?

Wine of the Week – 2020 Truffle Hunter Leda Barbera D’Asti

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