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Tag: Bosco Eliceo

  • The wines of the sands: the Bosco Eliceo and the winemakers we like

    The wines of the sands: the Bosco Eliceo and the winemakers we like

    Low vines, planted in sand, a few metres from the Adriatic. The ground crunches under your shoes like a beach. And yet a wine is born there, and it has just the right salinity for our fish.

    These are the wines of the sands: the Bosco Eliceo. A name that few people even in Ferrara know, and one we've been happy to pour ever since we opened. Because it comes from here, from our own patch of liquid world, sand, lagoons, sea, salt, and because we like the people who make it. This is our little guide, told from behind the counter.

    Why they're called “wines of the sands”

    The appellation is called Bosco Eliceo DOC and has been recognised since 1989. The nickname, “Vini delle Sabbie”, wines of the sands, isn't label poetry: it's the truth of the soil. The vines grow on ground that is up to 95-97% sand, the legacy of sediment laid down by the Po and the Reno and of the old land reclamations, between the province of Ferrara, the Po Delta and the coast.

    The name “Bosco Eliceo”, on the other hand, comes from the woods of holm oak, the “elci”, that once grew on the sand dunes along the sea.

    There's a detail we like to tell at the table. Many of these vines are “franche di piede”, ungrafted: sand makes the soil naturally hostile to phylloxera, the insect that wiped out half of Europe's vineyards in the nineteenth century. Here the low vines survived. Drinking a Bosco Eliceo, sometimes, means drinking from old plants that held on where elsewhere everything had to start again from scratch.

    Fortana, the “Uva d'Oro”

    The house grape is Fortana, which around here they call “Uva d'Oro”, the golden grape. It has been grown for centuries. The Consorzio traces the earliest evidence all the way back to the Etruscans of Spina, a local tradition, told that way by the people who protect the appellation, rather than a certain record.

    And here comes the lovely story, the one we love to tell while warning straight away that it's a legend, not a documented fact. Fortana is said to have come from the Côte d'Or, the “golden slope” of Burgundy, brought to Ferrara by Renée of France on her marriage to Ercole II d'Este: French vine cuttings that found a home in the sandy, brackish soils of the Delta. From there, they say, “Côte d'Or” became “Uva d'Oro”. It's a tradition, and we hold it dear for exactly what it is: a story that smells of the Este court, to be told at the end of dinner without passing it off as truth.

    Under the DOC there are four types: as well as Fortana, Merlot, Sauvignon and Bianco del Bosco. Four different ways of standing on sand.

    What a wine grown by the sea tastes like

    If you've never tasted them, fix one word in your mind: salinity. The wines of the sands have modest alcohol, around 10.5-11%, lovely acidity and a slightly salty note, a gift of the nearby sea. They're light, straightforward, often lightly sparkling. Fresh, fruity aromas, floral at times.

    No “important” wine that silences the dish, in other words. Wines that do their job: they make you thirsty, they clean your palate, they make you want the next mouthful. Trattoria wines, in the best sense of the word.

    Why a fish trattoria pours Bosco Eliceo

    A fair question: a red, or a “farmhouse” fizz, with fish? Yes. And this is exactly where the sand comes in useful.

    The logic is simple, the sommeliers' logic as told in a kitchen: acidity and bubbles cut through fat and bring balance. It works beautifully with the richer dishes of our lagoon world. Sparkling Fortana is the pairing of choice with eel, eel risotto for instance, where acidity and bubbles cut through the richness. And when the dish turns sharp, like certain brodetti from the Comacchio area made with vinegar, still Fortana holds up better than many whites.

    Then there are the whites. Bianco del Bosco frizzante, again, with eel risotto. Bosco Eliceo Sauvignon, dry and a touch tart, with marinated eel. And as an aperitivo, before sitting down, they all work.

    The thread is always the same: the salinity of the wine talking to the salinity of the lagoon fish. Same environment, same language. That's why on our list, alongside the winemakers we travel around to find, we keep a place for those who make wine just behind us.

    The new one to try: Fortana Rosé

    Among the new things there's the sparkling version of Fortana, the Fortana Rosé. It was born as an aperitivo, and it's perfect that way, a cold glass as you arrive, but it holds its own at the table too, with fish and white meats.

    If you come by in summer, with the long light and the heat that won't let go, it's the first thing we'll put in your hand. Bubbles, colour, freshness. Few pretensions and a great desire to carry on.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the wine of the sands?
    It's the name given to Bosco Eliceo DOC, a wine produced between Ferrara, the Po Delta and the coast on soils made almost entirely of sand, up to 95-97%. Hence the nickname.

    What wine do you drink in Ferrara?
    The most local wine, out towards the sea, is Bosco Eliceo: Fortana, Merlot, Sauvignon and Bianco del Bosco. Savoury, light wines, often lightly sparkling, made to be drunk at the table, and in our view with fish.

    What is Fortana?
    It's the leading grape of the Bosco Eliceo, also known as “Uva d'Oro”. It gives a fresh, savoury wine, often lightly sparkling, and today it also comes as a sparkling rosé.

    If you're passing

    Bosco Eliceo isn't a wine that changes your life at the first sip. It's better than that: it's a wine that tells you where you are. The sand, the sea a stone's throw away, the lagoons at your back.

    We keep it there, alongside the other artisan winemakers we like, and we're happy to open it for anyone who wants to understand where it comes from. If you fancy trying it, with a fritto or in front of a plate of eel, the table is ready. And if you'd rather start on your own, out along the Lidi: do it. That too, in the end, is what we call nuvolare: drifting along like a cloud.

  • Where to have an aperitivo in Ferrara: the areas, the atmosphere, a glass of wine from the sands

    Where to have an aperitivo in Ferrara: the areas, the atmosphere, a glass of wine from the sands

    The good hour is the one when the light drops and the city slows down a little more. Ferrara is slow enough already, quiet, on a human scale, a place to cross on foot or by bike, but at aperitivo time it turns positively gentle. People go out, sit down, wait for the evening to arrive. So the question is a simple one: where to have an aperitivo in Ferrara, and with what in your glass.

    We at Le Nuvole have a small idea about that. We'll tell you about the areas, the atmosphere that changes from one square to the next, and the wine we like to pour when the sun goes down: cool, saline, from these lands. No rankings, no addresses that change with the season. Just the places where it makes sense to stop, and why.

    The Listone: Piazza Trento e Trieste

    Anyone arriving in Ferrara and asking where to go for an aperitivo ends up here sooner or later. Piazza Trento e Trieste, the Listone, as everyone calls it, is the heart of city life in the historic centre, the theatrical space between the Cathedral and its museum.

    It's the square for occasions: broad, busy, a place people pass through. Along the flank of the Cathedral runs the Loggia dei Merciai, and Via Mazzini starts from here. The mood is see-and-be-greeted: you sit down and sooner or later someone you know walks by. Good for anyone who wants to be in the thick of things, with the façade of the Duomo, that weave of Romanesque and Gothic, as a backdrop while the light fades.

    Via delle Volte: an aperitivo in the shade of the vòlti

    Move a few hundred metres and everything changes. Via delle Volte is medieval Ferrara, one of the most evocative streets in the city: the backbone of the “linear Ferrara” that grew up between the 7th and 11th centuries. The name comes from the vòlti, the overhead passageways and arches that once linked the warehouses on the riverbank to the workshops towards the centre.

    Here the mood is intimate, a little secret. Stone, brick, shade. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century buildings closing in overhead. It's the right area for a slow aperitivo, the kind that turns into dinner without anyone noticing. Less shop window, more conversation.

    Around the Castle: the moat and the four towers

    Then there's the Castello Estense, the symbol of Ferrara: four towers rising from the moat, red terracotta brick, white balustrades, drawbridges. Sitting here for an aperitivo has something theatrical about it, the water all around, the great bulk darkening while the sky stays light for a moment longer.

    It's the most “postcard” area, and that's fine: some evenings a glass is worth it just to look up at the Torre dei Leoni from below. From here, if you like, you can carry on along Corso Ercole I d'Este, the monumental axis almost two kilometres long, as far as the Porta degli Angeli and the ring of the walls, nine kilometres of green to do on foot or by bike. That's no longer aperitivo: that's afterwards. But it's nice to know it's there.

    A gem: the oldest osteria in the world

    We can't resist. If Ferrara's aperitivo has one symbolic place, it's the Enoteca Al Brindisi, next to the Duomo in Via Guglielmo degli Adelardi: considered the oldest osteria in the world, documented since 1435 (back then the Hostaria del Chiucchiolino). In the fifteenth century people arrived by boat. It's hard to get more “local aperitivo” than that.

    We mention it gladly, because in Ferrara generosity pays for everyone: a city with a six-hundred-year-old osteria is a city where the very idea of stopping for a glass has deep roots.

    What to drink: the wine of the sands

    And here we come home. Because in Ferrara an aperitivo can be a statement of place rather than just any old glass.

    A few kilometres from the centre, between the province, the Po Delta and the Adriatic coast, lies the Bosco Eliceo DOC, the “wines of the sands”, so called because the vines grow on soils that are up to 95-97% sand, the legacy of the Po, the Reno and the land reclamations. The leading grape is Fortana, the old “Uva d'Oro”, the golden grape, grown around here for centuries.

    They're wines with a precise soul: modest alcohol (around 10.5-11%), good acidity, and that slightly saline note that comes from the sea next door. Light, easy to like, often lightly sparkling. In a word: made for aperitivo. The savouriness of the sand, after all, is the same thing we look for in the fish of these lagoons; it's the thread that ties the vineyard to the table.

    Worth trying, when you get the chance, is the Fortana Rosé, the sparkling wine the Consorzio proposes precisely as an aperitivo, a local rosé instead of the usual anonymous white. And if you like living wines, look for the bottle-refermented wines of the small Bosco Eliceo growers, such as those of Mirco Mariotti: ungrafted vines a few hundred metres from the Adriatic, “farmhouse bubbles”, saline and a little wild. No champagne. Something more ours.

    Our aperitivo

    We're a fish trattoria, not a bar on the square, but we know what a glass before sitting down means. Eli's cellar is “always on the move”, built on artisan winemakers and natural wines, and the wine of the sands is part of the family: we happily uncork it as the evening begins, perhaps with something from the sea to ease you into the meal, no hurry.

    If an aperitivo in the squares makes you want to stay, the step from a Fortana to a table of fish is shorter than it looks. But that, if anything, is another evening.

    Frequently asked questions

    Where do you go for an aperitivo in Ferrara?
    The classic areas are three: the Listone (Piazza Trento e Trieste), the busy heart of the city near the Duomo; Via delle Volte, the more intimate and evocative medieval street; and the area around the Castello Estense, theatrical, with its moat and towers. Next to the Duomo there's also Al Brindisi, the oldest osteria in the world, documented since 1435.

    What do you drink at aperitivo time in Ferrara?
    The local glass is the wine of the sands from the Bosco Eliceo: cool, slightly saline Fortana, often lightly sparkling, and the Fortana Rosé proposed precisely as an aperitivo. Alternatively, the bottle-refermented wines of the small Bosco Eliceo growers, lively, savoury wines born on vines a few steps from the sea.

    If you're passing

    Ferrara is a city that rewards those who slow down. Choose the square that suits you, order a glass of these sands, and let the light do its work. Then, if you get hungry and feel like the sea, you know where we are: the table is ready, no hurry.