“THERE’S ONLY ONE WINE AT THE COMMAND” IN THE “CLASSIFICATION OF ALL CLASSIFICATIONS”: MOSCATO GIALLO PASSITO SERENADE CASTEL GIOVANELLI 2005 BY CALDARO IS THE ONLY WINE TO RECEIVE THE TOP SCORE FROM ALL OF ITALY’S MOST IMPORTANT GUIDES

“There’s only one wine at the command” of all of Italy’s wine guides and that is the Moscato Giallo Passito “Serenade” Castel Giovanelli 2005 made by the Caldaro winery. It is the only wine this year that has received the top score from all of Italy’s most important wine guides. More precisely, the wine received “Three Glasses” from the Vini d’Italia Gambero Rosso – Slow Food guide, “Five Bottles” from Vini d’Italia Espresso guide, “Three Stars” from the Veronelli guide, “Five Grape Bunches” from the Duemilavini guide by AIS/Bibenda, and “Super Three Stars” by the Annuario dei migliori vini Italiani by Luca Maroni.
“The result is definitely surprising” – commented Alessandro Regoli, Director of www.winenews.it – “but, at the same time, it clearly represents an absolute heterogeneity in Italian wine critique. The guides reviewed wines like, for example, the Barolo 2004, which, above and beyond preferences and personal taste could have surely secured a common judgement of at least 15/20 wines. Of course, we have to take into account the different criteria used for analysis by the different guides, with the fact that companies do not provide all of their samples to all of the guides, but reach an agreement on a single wine that seems truly a sort of ‘suspension of judgement’, rather than an authoritative voice from the top wine critics of Italy”.
But going back to this year’s “super wine” that everyone does agree on, it is a sweet wine that is obtained from a late harvest of the Moscato Giallo grape, cultivated in the vineyards to the north of Lake Caldaro at an altitude of 300 meters above sea level by the Caldaro winery. After the fermentation, the wine is then aged in barrique for 24 months. Total production is about 5,000 bottles and costs about 30 euros at retail.
The WineNews cross study of this year’s top wine guide editions also revealed 5 protagonists among these guides (San Leonardo 2003 Tenuta San Leonardo, Montevetrano 2005 Montevetrano, Terra di Lavoro 2005 Galardi, Sassicaia 2004 Tenuta San Guido di Bolgheri, and, obviously, Moscato Giallo Passito “Serenade” 2004 della Cantina di Caldaro). In the 2007 edition, there were, instead, two wines that received a top score from all of the guides: Galatrona 2004 Fattoria di Petrolo and Montevetrano 2004.
As for the preceding year, there were actually eight wines that shared the top score: Gaja, Sorì San Lorenzo 2001; Casanova di Neri, Brunello Cerretalto 1999; Masciarelli, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Villa Gemma 2001; Oasi degli Angeli, Kurni 2003; Galardi, Terra di Lavoro 2003, Montevetrano, Montevetrano 2003; Sandrone, Barolo Cannubi Boschis 2001; Foradori, Granato 2003.