Ribelle

camillo-donati-ribelle-vert

This wine comes from an idea we had in 2016, while observing and taking note of yet another hot and dry year. For years we have been “shouting from the rooftops” about how the climate has drastically changed (in the last 40 years the harvest period was brought forward by about 50 days, thus making the grapes become a purely summer fruit, while it was an autumn one) and how the
vines struggle to adapt to these new seasons, but in the last 10 years, apart from the 2014 parenthesis (a wonderful vintage for us, a real dive into the past of at least 20 years!) all this has worsened further, becoming a real trend. Some vines are responding better than others to these climate changes and among the “struggling” ones there is certainly Barbera.

Barbera is a vine which has been present on our hills for several centuries and has always been at ease here, giving rise to great wines! Now it’s limping along, why? The vine still brings its grapes to full ripeness, but the difference between “technical” ripeness (sugars, acidity, etc..) and the phenolic one (the real one, as I consider it to be) – which you can measure in your mouth and between your fingers – today is huge! If nowadays you wait for the complete phenolic maturation, as it would be right to do to obtain the peculiarities of the vine and all its characteristics, you will find yourself with sky-high sugars! For us who try to make sparkling wines, when 15°-16° degrees of alcohol are reached, it becomes impossible to think that this type of wine can referment in bottle

Hence the name Ribelle (rebel)!

Rebel, as you may have already understood, is Barbera! Barbera harvested very early, even before Malvasia! We press the grapes directly in the press and only the juice drained before pressing is used to produce Ribelle, which is then left to ferment spontaneously in steel barrels without the
skins. Simply, that’s all.

In this way we have obtained a wine that has a lower alcohol content, which allows its yeasts to carry on a refermentation in bottle, and – even more important – we have found again the great drinkability of Barbera that in recent years had been lost! Obviously it is a very different Barbera from the one we get by harvesting the grapes 20 days later and vinifying it on its skins for a few days, but we liked the result very much, precisely for its simplicity and extreme drinkability. Once again Barbera moved us! That’s why the name of this wine could only be Ribelle! Barbera who wants to rebel against these climate changes, Barbera who against all apparent logic dresses in pink and resists!

Another reason in the choice of the name is completely personal, even if I believe it to be very current: rebel like my father and many others who – like him – made a conscious choice of life when they were 16/17 years old, overcoming personal, political and religious differences and all together rebelled against those who were trampling on the fundamental human and Christian rights and values of the dignity and freedom of every person (this is why the blue color on the
label)!

Ribelle used to be deliberately available only in magnum for several reasons: not only we would like it to be drunk in company, but also, in addition to providing emotions, we would like it to trigger a debate in order to push everybody to reflect on and to take a decisive position against those who cause these climatic upheavals for the sake of our children and our planet! Utopian?
Probably, but who knows… Maybe even 80 years ago it was considered “utopian” to be able to change things but…

Today Ribelle is also available in 0.75 liter bottle because we understood that for many consumers the magnum bottle is too challenging to deal with.

We thank Providence for inspiring us this idea for Barbera and for giving us the opportunity to play a part, even if infinitesimal, in defence of our wonderful planet Earth we received as a gift from God and which has been guarded and safeguarded by so many good people for centuries and never before in the history of humanity so much on the ropes!