Liquoroso

Liquoroso is the name in Italy for a mostly sweet, fortified wine . Due to the alcohol enrichment and the associated termination of fermentation , it differs from a passito , which is often also sweet, but always unpredited . A Liquoroso belongs to the group of fortified wines like a sherry or Madeira .

Liquorosos are very popular in Italy (→ viticulture in Italy ); they are made in almost every DOC . The manufacturing processes, the carrier types and the characters of the resulting products are correspondingly diverse. However, many Liquorosos are sweet, high-alcohol liqueur wines of rather modest quality. Remarkable sweet and dry wines of this type come from Sardinia, such as the Bosa, which is made from Malvasia , or the Nasco di Cagliari , which is based on musts from the indigenous Sardinian grape Nasco . Also the Greco di Bianco from Calabria, made from dried grapes of the old white grape variety Greco , deserves attention if it is carefully vinified.
The most famous, albeit by far not always the best liquoroso is probably the Marsala , whose reputation - like that of most southern wines , by the way - has deteriorated considerably over the past five decades. Only since a significantly more restrictive new version of the DOC regulations have higher quality wines from this region come on the market again.

literature

• Stephen Brook: Liquid Gold: Dessert Wines of the World. Constable, 1987, ISBN 978-0-09-466920-8
• Horst Dippel (ed.): The wine lexicon . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-596-24501-X
• Jancis Robinson (Ed.): The Oxford Wine Lexicon . Hallwag, Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-8338-0691-9 .