Bellavista and the dream of Meraviglioso

Only 5,000 magnums were made of Meraviglioso Bellavista, a blend of six reserve wines from Vittorio Moretti’s top estate: 1984, 1988, 1991, 1995, 2001 and 2002. 

Meraviglioso  (Wonderful) is the name Vittorio Moretti  gave to the latest creation from Bellavista  the first time he tasted it. The wine was the result of a complex project supervised by Mattia Vezzola , who has been in charge for Bellavista production since 1981 (two years after it was founded), one that went beyond the desire to create the estate’s top Cuvée. In fact, it was so complex that Vezzola said it would take hours to explain even to a wine expert. I had the fortune of tasting it with him and Francesca Moretti , the family’s enologist who father Vittorio has put in charge of all the Terra Moretti  wine estates, a role that became even more important since the entry into the group of Teruzzi & Puthod and Sella&Mosca.

Before opening one of the 5,000 magnums  of Meraviglioso, Mattia Vezzola explained to me the evolution of this unique Franciacorta, how the goal was to create a “great wine” which by definition needed to have a long lifespan. The project was developed together with Vittorio Moretti , a tenacious and undoubtedly difficult man to work with because of his determination. Most of all he is a courageous entrepreneur who invested heavily in the area where he met his wife Marinella and where he made his dream of building an important winemaking reality come true. Bellavista  is often just seen as a brand because of the fact that the name of the estate has become so iconic that the consumer often does not bother to understand what lies behind the label. The estate has 190 hectares of vineyards  subdivided in to 225 parcels for the most part situated between Erbusco Adro and Capriolo  with a recently acquired vineyard that sits at 500m above sea level on Monte Alto. The vineyards are worked by teams of 12 men who are responsible for all stages of cultivation, from pruning to tilling the land every other row and mixing in green manure for organic production. The fermentation is almost a stylistic signature and involves a controlled oxidation of part of the must  in order to create a wine with a propensity to age.

In order to create Meraviglioso’s complexity and bring out Franciacorta’s capacity to age, Mattia Vezzola decided to “sacrifice” some of the Vittorio Moretti vintages in the cellar and make a unique blend  composed of six previous vintages - 1984, 1988, 1991, 1995, 2001 and  2002  – which had sat on the lees for over 12 years. However, he explained the blend was not of the “finished” Vittorio Moretti Reserves but rather the wines that were kept in large, six and nine one-liter bottles under a lower pressure so they could be used as a liqueur (as they do at Bollinger). The cuvée was bottled at the beginning of 2003.

This was not a mere exercise in winemaking skill but a stylistic statement of the estate’s philosophy and a homage to the greatest vintages of Riserva Vittorio Moretti  over a period of 18 years. Disgorged and first presented in 2015, after two years in the bottle Meraviglioso today is conveying its most expressive traits and making it clear that it will have the long life it was conceived to have.

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