The Making of Moscato Elevato

We will soon be releasing a very special and versatile dessert wine call Moscato Elevato under our Enotria label. This style of dessert wine is one of the most traditional made all over Italy from several varieties of Moscato grapes. In the southern regions, especially Sicily, the table grape variety Muscat of Alexandria, also called Zibbibo is used and in the north and central parts of Italy Moscato Bianco is used. This style of wine is a fortified wine and in Italy is called Moscato Liquoroso. The most correct way to produce this wine is to first distill the Moscato grapes you are using for the wine then add fermenting or unfermented grape juice to the distillate to kill the fermentation and add lots of natural grape sugar to the wine. Some add distillate from other grape varieties or other forms of alcohol which is an inferior method and produces inferior examples of this type of wine.

We had the distillery Alambic, otherwise known then as Germain-Robin, which is just down the road from us, distill some of our Potter Valley Moscato Bianco wine. We added the distillate to several barrels then added fermenting 2018 Moscato Bianco wine to fill the barrels. The Moscato had about 10% sugar left in the wine which when added to the barrels killed the fermentation. We left the wine in the barrels for a about a year until the wine and alcohol married with each other, then we bottled the wine in special clear bottles before the next harvest. The resulting wine is 16% alcohol and 10% residual sugar and was bottled in beautiful 375ml bottles with a special label. We tried to call the wine Moscato Liquoroso like its Italian counterparts and advertise it as a fortified wine, but the governmental agency TTB, who approves our wine labels would have none of that. So, I came up with the name Elevato, being elevated, to bless this very special wine. This very special wine can be used in many ways. Chilled as an apertivo, served with a variety of white or stone fruits and tarts for desserts or mixed with other forms of alcohols to make fancy cocktails.

On your next trip to the tasting room or your next wine shipment, please include several bottles of Enotria Moscato Elevato, you won’t be disappointed.

All the best, — Gregory Graziano