Bulli ‘Cör’ Rosso

Location: Italy, Emilia-Romagna

Winemaker: Leonardo Bulli

Grapes: Barbera, Bonarda, Uve Rare

Soil: limestone, mild alkaline

Winemaking: 10 to 15 days on the skins with periodic racking (Bonarda/Croatina can be reductive).

From the Importer PortoVino: ‘Cör’ is a soif meets vinous field blend from mostly old vines (10-50 yr. old) from a traditional Emilio-Romagna producer?? Say no more. These soils give direct and honest wines, with a rustic minerality and saltiness. As Italians say of an honest farmer wine: Semplice ma non banale. / Simple but not boring.

Bulli is our newest little gem from the northwest corner of Emilia-Romagna in the Colli Piacentini, those step hills, just south of Piacenza, squeezed between the Po river to the north and the Apennine mountains to the south. The area itself is sleepy, a time-capsule from the 1940’s, with farmers that still have that askance look of their forefathers, those ex-Roman soldiers who tended vines in retirement.

There’s a long tradition of making frizzante metodo ancestrale; in this area, and Bulli has been doing it for five generations, since the late 1800’s. Don’t get the idea that this is a family with a castle. The Bulli family is humble, easygoing, happy to serve locals everyday from their repurposed horse stall, where all the sparkling in the bottle fermentation happens. La Signora Bulli is especially proud of the medallion coins the family has won for its wines in the late 1800’s. They are a testament of it being a serious winery from the beginning. Her son, Leonardo Bulli, is especially proud of the fact that they never used SO2, in fact, senza solfiti aggiunti is written on their original vintage-kitsch style labels since the 1950’s. There’s no faux-retro going on here.

One key that helps preserve their wines without SO2, and gives them a sprightly character, is the soil.  Bacedasco Alto is the town where the Bulli family has their house and horse-cellar, and it is right next to an important geological park that contains a series of ancient limestone calanques from the Pliocene period. Think of the calanques near the wine town of Cassis (without the sea ; ).

Between the amazing homemade salumi and gulping down some Bulli fizz with the family on my last visit there, I couldn’t quite understand a sentence in my notes: “La Signora Bulli says that they are famous for whales.” I mean that must be important, right!? It took me a few hours of digging around to figure out the area is famous for finding a large amount of whale fossils. The local museum has a great map of the geological park, and a cool video of the unearthing of a whale fossil in 1936.

These are the kind of wines we are proud to import: a rich history, complex soils, hand-crafted and natural wines,  good people – and a whale bone connection.