 That is the definition of a good Maserita wine. When you taste this, you ask yourself, like, what the hell are some other people doing to their Maserita wine? Hello, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Orkey. Hello, I'm Shareen Tan. Welcome back to the show. We're gonna do... This is the second part in our Rassoli taste test video about the Rassoli Italian Wine Club. If you want to know more about the club, I'll put our article in the description box or in a link to our last video so you can hear about the club more in depth. We're gonna get right into tasting the wines today. But very just briefly, this is a cool wine club. This is the only wine club that we work with. We are affiliates with the wine club because they deliver unique Italian grapes from small producers, organic vineyards, biodynamic vineyards, native yeasts, all that stuff. You like them. Let's go for it. Let's get into some of the wines. What Rassoli does is they now change so that what they send two times a year, they should send a package of 12 wines. And they have several tiers. Just kind of explore the mid-range and then kind of super premium collector wines. We have some of the first two tiers. And like we said in the last video, we'd like to quite a bit of the first couple wines we taste, especially the Rizzi Barbera di El. But you want to say anything else about how much you like that wine? Well, I enjoy this wine very much, mostly but also because I like Barbera. But what was interesting was after tasting, I really liked the wine. And upon the more research, I realized that this is more of a producer that didn't have such good vintages in the past, but lately they are known to make much better and very commendable wines. So I think that's very interesting. And I can see that the wine club is doing a good job in bringing this lesser known producers who are doing really well now, bringing them forward to consumers. Yeah, so I agree. And it's cool because Italian wines can be intimidating. It's cool that their hands select really good wines. We're going to get into the mid-range tier. We have two wines that I am really shocked they said, because for mid-range tier wines, these wines are not cheap. And these are excellent wines. First, I have the Damien. So it's full names Damien Poversic. The Necai 2015. This is from Friuli Venizia Giulia, an area that we really, really, really like. This is a macerated wine, an orange wine. So for people that aren't familiar, it's a white grapes kept on the skins like they make red wine. So that's why you get more color, more tannin. This is the grape Friulano 2015 aged for three years of wood one year in the bottle. I love this producer. I'm so shocked when I open the box. This is not a cheap wine. This wine is in their mid-package, but this wine retails for about 40-45 euros. I'm really excited to taste this. 14-5 alcohol. What are you picking up? Having tasted a lot of Friulano macerated, I would say that Friulano is actually one of the best grapes for making macerated wine. It has a lot of freshness on the nose. What you're expecting is a little bit of floral note, but a lot of citrus note. And regardless of how long the maceration is, most of the time it's a very well-made macerated wine. It always retains this freshness that a lot of people would appreciate. It's also a little bit botanical on the nose as well. I got a little dried pineapple, dried sweet peach type notes. But you always also get the orange, the lemon notes very strongly on the nose. Peach is also a typical flavor. This area of the world is awesome. We haven't been there last year, but we were going there about once a year. Rolling Hills, real soulful area right on the border. Slovenia, steep terraces, a lot of these type of wines that are macerated, spontaneous fermentations. It's kind of like the spiritual home of these wines, even though the origin is actually Georgia. But this area kind of brought these wines to the forefront. What do you think so far? Very good wine. It's a very classic Friulano style. You don't get a lot of M-pallet in the sense that you don't get a lot of tendons, like what you would expect maybe from Vibhula or something. But it has a sense of crispness to it. On top of that, it gains some smokiness, a little bit of this olino from the barrel. I believe it's from the barrel. But what makes this wine really distinct from the rest of the Friulano is it's quite salty. So it's got a very nice texture. It's very salty. It's salty and tangy. I really, really like this. Lately, we used to be crazy about macerated wine. Shareen's palette is going a little bit away from macerated natural wine state lately. But what do you think about this? I don't think that's true. I just find that a lot of macerated wines are not made up to scratch. They kind of just make macerated wine because they like the idea of macerated wine. Just like rosé. You know, I love rosé, but there are a lot of rosés that are just not well done. In this case, this is one of the best macerated styles. So you think it's good? Yeah, it's very good. And I feel that there's a little bit of this salif as well. You have a little bit of this nice yoghurt. Do you know it's on the palette? A little bit of sweet vanilla on the palette, too. I like this area is famous for macerated Robola gel, which has higher acidity, tougher tannins. Tannins here are softer, easier to drink for people just getting into macerated wines as he's not super high. But Friulano actually has this nice tanniness that it really reminds of kind of pineapple. I'm actually quite high on this wine. We'll sit down, we'll taste through it, see what my final score is. But I'm 91 plus-ish. Maybe even could go higher if once we taste through this wine. I agree. I agree. Can I see what is the vintage? There's quite a bit of ageability in this one. 15. I can see it even. Here's my vintage wine. This is the current release. Nice. There is the definition of a good macerated wine. When you taste this, you ask yourself, like, what the hell are some other people doing to their macerated wine? I am shot to see in the pack is a Barbaresco from Piedmont. The same region as this Ritzi. This is the Piero Busso Barbaresco Mondino. 2016 was an extraordinary vintage in Piedmont. For those of you that don't know, Barbaresco is not the grape. It's made from the grape Neveolo, which is a grape that creates profound wines. Piedmont is in the northwest corner of Italy, right under the Alps. There's three villages you have to know in the Barbaresco DOC that are main. There's Barbaresco itself. There's Treso in the south, and there's Neve, which this village is from. That's kind of more of the northeast part of the Appalachian. That's where this is from. Cool. The vineyards are steep, rolling, and on clear days you can see the Alps. This is a grape that I absolutely love. You're going to get some lighter color, not super dark for a red wine. I am excited. I do not know this producer. We were just in Barbaresco last year. We've been a couple of times. I like the wines a lot. Let's give this a go. I'm just talking to give you time to actually analyze. I was listening to you at the same time. Very, very classic Neveolo nose. Really cranberry, sour cherry, earth, tar, leather. This is why great wines are great. Great grapes are great. Neveolo in Piedmonté just can create some really profound wines. I haven't tasted it yet. Can I have some tough tannins? What do you think? I don't think the tannins are too tough. It's only a little bit astringent, so I think it's very accessible right now. I do think it's a little bit animal on the nose. Maybe just a little bit of red, but in this case, I think it works well because in this case, I really think it brings about a little bit more complexity, a little bit of this. It's not crossing into Bania. I feel that it's a little bit more animal and a little bit more earthy on the nose. I really like the evolution. You can see a little bit of obviously the colors. You can see a little bit of browning already, but it works well in this case. I find that this wine is great to drink right now. This is my style of wine. I really like it. You got the tart red fruit. I love when wines can go sour, cherry on me. You got the letterness, the savoriness. For this round of tasting, I'm really impressed because we like both the two wines. The first tasting, you weren't so crazy about one of the wines. This round, what else do you want to add on this one? I'm really happy with this barbaresco. It's not the classiest barbaresco, but I just find that it's just made to drink now and it packs a lot of complexity at this age. The tannins are really nice. It's nice, elegant on the palate. You've got to want the tannin when you want Nebula. They're small, they coat the mouth. Uneasily, just to start, easily, and this is my type of wine, 92, 92 plus on this type of wine, automatically because I know it's going to be age-worthy too. So I'm really, really quite high on this. Any thoughts about the final taste? I wouldn't score it that high personally, but I still think it would be the 90 range. This is the kind of wine that I would be confident to bring to people like you or a certain palette that wants this earthiness. I think this wine has a sense of place and also a sense of identity and signature. I really, really enjoy it. I can see that. Nebula gets better with air. Great job. You want to talk anything about Rassoli before we kind of close up? Any final impressions of the second pack? I'm still really very impressed by their wines and over and over again. I think every single time they send us a shipment, we always learn something new from them. It's not just about enjoyment of wine. I find that when you're joining a wine club, it's about having this relationship with someone that you trust and also someone to go out there to do the job for you, to help you seek out certain wines that you don't know about and you may like. So I feel that I can learn something from Rassoli for every shipment. Awesome. So we have an affiliate code, a discount code 10% off for you. I'm going to put our tasting article of these wines, everything in the description box. Take it for what's worth. I've had a couple of readers actually purchase some of these packs and say thank you and they really, really enjoyed it. So yeah, thanks a lot. Check them out. Guys, if you like our tasting videos, all our videos, you want to please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. Click the bell so you know when new videos come out and... We'll see you in the next episode. Good job.