The history of Società Agricola Fay was born in 1973 at the hands of the young Sandro Fay who, inherited small plots of vineyard, began to produce wine suitable for marketing. If Sandro is the pioneer, it is, however, with his son Marco, who entered the company permanently in 2002, after his studies in enology, that the winery definitely takes off, thanks to the high quality that his wines can touch.
One of the first emblematic choices that characterize Marco’s work is to renounce to all the plots of property outside the Valgella area, one of the five sub-areas of Valtellina Superiore DOCG. In reality, Marco has also kept a hectare of land in the Sassella area, the vineyard Il Glicine, but this should not be misleading: over time Marco has become in effect a specialist of Valgella. The concentration on a specific productive sub-area, which is only 150 hectares in size, allowed Marco to divide his vineyards according to a classification based on three different altimetric altitudes, called “Coste”. According to this classification we can speak of Costa Bassa (the vineyards that start from the bottom of the valley and reach about 450 meters), ideal for the freshest and immediate wines, and Costa Intermedia (between 450 and 600 meters), dedicated to more structured and complex wines. The trio is closed with the Costa Alta, over 600 meters, where climatic conditions cause a thickening of the skins, a parameter necessary to be able to produce Sforzato wine.
Just following this setting Marco gets a Sforzato della Valtellina from a south-facing vineyard of 2.5 hectares, the San Gervasio, at an altitude of 750 meters. In this vineyard, in the municipality of Tegli, an experiment lasted 4 years that led to the birth of this Ronco del Picchio, a wine that owes its name to the presence of woodpeckers in the forest overlooking the vineyard itself. Here the soil is sandy, slightly silty and acid pH and the grapes that are obtained barely reach 35 quintals per hectare. After the harvest, around the middle of October, the grapes dry for about two months, placed in small open boxes, before fermenting in steel and aging 12 months in a mix of large barrels and tonneaux.
The 2016 vintage has a pretty intense ruby color, with an olfactory range that opens with notes of wild strawberry, cooked plum, pomegranate and pot pourri, followed by sour cherry, blood orange, cocoa powder and Kentucky tobacco, with concluding echoes of ripe leather, wax, incense and graphite. The palate, although mainly fresh, does not give up a good softness, with a light but pleasant tannin, and a tasty sapid/mineral vein; all enriched by the return of red fruit and spices that accompany the sip until a good length closure.
Rating: 91/100
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