Valentina Passalacqua Calcarius Orange Puglia Bianco Puglia IGP

Spontaneous fermentation in open tanks with 4/5 days of contact with the skins. Manual breaking of the cap. Unfiltered. No temperature control. Aging for 6 months in steel tanks.

Calcarius is the project of Valentina Passalacqua, started in 2017 in Apricena in the Gargano region of northern Puglia where it abuts Abruzzo. Valentina has been the leading exponent of biodynamics in Puglia since 2000, her farm comprising up to 80 hectares of vines, fruit and vegetables.

This part of Puglia is composed of a pinkish/whitish calcareous bedrock, the consequence of compacted limestone rocks crystallising in the Jurassic period more than 150 million years ago (the same as the Kimmeridgian geological era). The landscape is marked by loose rocky deposits, the result of the limestone erosion, and variegated clays created by the chemical and physical process of decomposition of these calcareous rocks. The vineyards of Gargano are rooted in the Magna Grecia, as Ovid referred to this region which had been settled by Hellenic settlers from the 8th century onwards.

The grape varieties are the fruit – as it were – of this historic fusion of two cultures, being Nero di Troia, Greco Bianco, Bombino, Negroamaro and Aleatico. And the wines are naturally made with ambient spontaneous alcoholic fermentations, which Valentina and Danilo describe as “a processing of mineralization…the salts present in the grapes in an organic form turn into mineral inorganic components. The unstable composition of the must acquires a new stable and mineralized form in the wine.” The Orange a tasty maceration of Falanghina.