When Nature raises its voice, we must respect our role and stick to our ethics. In difficult years, when climate change attacks the vines with droughts or torrential rains, it hurls into us the instinct of the most enraged creativity, accepting the base that Nature wanted to give us. Thus, the wines of “Bora” are produced: special labels, faithful testimonies of a challenging vintage with yields of around 10 to 20 quintals per hectare, expressing unrepeatable suggestions and undertones, telling their story with new words. And results that can surprise you.
Vine variety: 100% Malvasia raisin wine
Production area: the Karst region
Soil: limestone plateau covered with iron-rich red soil
Average age of vines: 18 years
Plant spacing: Guyot – 9,000 vines per hectare – the Simonit method
Yield: 1,500 kilograms per hectare, 70% yield loss due to drying and noble rot
Serving temperature: 18°C
Best served with: blue and mature cheeses paired with honey and mostarda. Walnut pies.
 
“I love white wine, always trying to imagine how could be the harvest of Ramandolo. I believe Istrian Malvasia can also be a great passito. In the summer of 2011 Malvasia’s berries were attacked by botrytis, the noble rot par excellence. It happens often with our Leonard wine. This time we let dry a small part of the vines in the vineyard, Malvasia Punta is the vineyard facing northeast, losing almost 70% of the total. We brought into the cellar a small quantity of little, beautiful grapes. That year, maceration and fermentation were for me a lifetime lesson.
We decided to cool the must to the temperature of -2°, and I was excited, very much when I saw, very slowly, the fermentation kept going. In the cellar, delicious amazing perfumes scattered around. The yeasts wanted to survive, and I was contemplating that immense force, the force of life. I had never had any wine given me such emotions. I remember that Sunday, when at noon the bells of the church sung we interrupted the cooling, leaving the wine to reach its own destiny. The fermentation lasted for months, it seemed to never end… the air was full of strange aromas… but you lay there, positive, as you do not perceive volatile acidity surrounding you. This impelled me to stay calm. In the meantime, the malolactic fermentation also started, Mother Nature at work, and I did not to interfere.
When the fermentation stopped, the sugar residue was too low for a passito. The wine came into the light, somehow it was mine, and I had to give it a name: Cadenza d’Inganno (Cadence of Deception) was my immediate thought; there could be no other, a name linked to music. A chord sequence that deflects the end of a sentence, lyrically, making you continue to… something, one does not want to finish yet, because it is too beautiful, almost perpetual. I thought: “It cannot be so! It’s wrong!” Soon after: “Why not?” It happens in music, in wine, and in life. Discovering this wine, accepting its deviations, lifted me to a small distance from eternity.”
Nataša Černic – 8 March 2015