Mosnel: 180 years of history in Franciacorta

It is always an important moment when a person or an estate takes stock of their history and the importance increases when this moment coincides with a milestone in the life of a person or estate. Such a situation took place this year for siblings Giulio and Lucia Barzanò, the fifth generation of winegrowers in Camignone who today run the family estate they inherited from their mother Emanuela Barboglio.

Mosnel marked its 180th anniversary of winemaking with a special celebration edition that also coincided with a restyling of the estate’s label and a small change in its name, 40 years after they dropped the ‘il’ (the) in front of Mosnel to make it easier to remember abroad. The estate today is tackling new markets and new challenges and the audacity Giulio and Lucia needed to do this they also inherited from their mother who not only set the estate’s modern course but was also one of the driving forces behind the creation of Consorzio Franciacorta producers’ association, together with 28 other founding members. Emanuele Barboglio, born in 1936, is remembered as an elegantly austere woman who had great energy and foresight. She was among the first in 1968  to exploit the new DOC classification for her Franciacorta wine using grapes from her Roccolo vineyard (the first to be awarded a DOC classification) and she was undoubtedly in the forefront  when, in 1980, she adopted an Extra Brut dosage for her Franciacorta DOCG Il Mosnel.

For this reason, Giulio and Lucia decided to honor her memory and, above all, her energy by creating a Chardonnay cuvée using grapes from the 2003 harvest and naming it after her: Franciacorta Extra Brut EBB Millesimato, the EBB standing for Emanuela Barzanò Barboglio. And to mark the Camignone estate’s 180th anniversary and the creation of this new cuvée, Giulio and Lucia organized a vertical tasting of the first 10 vintages of Franciacorta Extra Brut EBB that was reserved for 50 national and international journalists. The tasting began with vintage 2002 and concluded with an on-the-spot disgorgement and thus preview of vintage 2012, which is still sitting on the lees and will not be officially presented before 2017.

According to Giulio Barzanò, “EBB is a wine of maturity, a traditional method wine that seeks to sublime the estate’s style with the delicate intensity of Chardonnay fermented in wood and left to age in the bottle for 36 months”. All the wines were amazing, rich in nuances and changing expressions depending on the year, but one deserved special mention and was the 2006 vintage that literally knocked out everyone present. This Franciacorta has an enormous potential to evolve and still has a balsamic freshness, a harmonious iodine harmony and a texture with deep fruity notes and complexity.

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