San Francisco Double Gold Medal, June 2010

We announce a salient honor for one of this estate’s defining endeavors. The jury of critics of the San Francisco International Wine Competition has awarded its Double Gold Medal to the 2006 vintage of our Malvaxia Passito. This recognition echoes Gold Medals for the 2002, 2003 and 2005 vintages at Virginia Governor's Cup competitions, and published plaudits from two leading British writers on wine, Andrew Jefford in The Financial Times and Michael Broadbent in Decanter. The San Francisco International Wine Competition is a benchmark forum of evaluation for winegrowers from all over the world, attracting well over 3,500 entries in a given year. Although this award for Malvaxia Passito 2006 is not the first time the Competition has awarded Gold to our wines -- including Sparkling Brut, Philéo, Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, and two vintages of Nebbiolo in recent years -- its bestowal in the 20th Anniversary year of our winemaker's tenure at Barboursville is very happily timed.

The Malvaxia Passito is a wine of singular significance to our estate, for its validation of winemaking techniques embedded in our Italian heritage, and for its production's engagement of so many of our winery staff. The encouragement from this constant outpouring of praise is as great, as the output is small, from grapes which have been raisinised by long air drying. But it is not for these prizes that we undertake the traditional Passito winemaking process, to create this extravagant and complex dessert wine -- a process we brought to Virginia in 2000, which is by far the most demanding in labor and time. It is because this wine's great beauty simply could not be achieved any other way. The Passito method has demonstrated conclusively, that it is this growing region's ideal means of crafting wines to rank with the finest eissweins and botrytised wines of the Old World.

The Malvaxia Passito is created in a building renovated for its own exclusive use, where the grapes are dried on racks open to natural ventilation for 4 months, followed by a gentle pressing after the first very cold nights in January. The juice then ferments in barrel, gently, for months, at the slowest pace any wine ever knows. The following year, transferred finally into stainless steel tank, the wine is allowed to settle for up to another year, to concentrate itself further. It is bottled in 375ml without filtration, its natural cork later to be sealed in traditional wax. This ancient method conserves the precious acidity of the fruit in elegant proportion to its lavish mouthfeel, aromatics, sweetness, alcohol, and vigorous longevity of finish.

The result is incomparably the most age-worthy wine produced in Virginia, with a life to be measured in decades. Our smallest production, it is seldom presented at public tastings because of its scarcity, although it is enjoyed on a regular basis at Palladio Restaurant as the focus of an appropriate selection of dessert cheeses. While supplies last, it is always available at www.barboursvillecellar.com for direct shipping and at selected wine shops in Virginia.

Malvaxia Passito 2006 will be presented, side by side with Philéo, at our annual Garden and Sea Lunch on July 24th, prepared by Palladio’s Chef Melissa Close Hart, in association with Charlottesville’s Seafood on West Main and Planet Earth Diversified. Reservations are necessary, (540) 832-7848.