Foradori “Lezèr”
Dolomiti, Italy | 2023
Foradori is one of those producers we will pretty much always find an excuse to put in front of you. Hailing from the mind bogglingly high-elevation vineyards of the Dolomites, Elisabetta Foradori took over her family estate in the 1980s and became almost synonymous with Teroldego, a native red grape that had largely been relegated to fairly ordinary bulk wine but one that Elisabetta single-handedly helped revive, bringing along with it it well-deserved international acclaim.
Through painstaking work in the vineyards, biodynamic farming, massale selection, and plenty of experimentation in the cellar, she helped prove just how distinctive and serious Teroldego could be. Today, her children are deeply involved in the estate, and Foradori has become one of the benchmark names not just in Trentino, but in the entire world of thoughtful, low-intervention winemaking.
The wine Lezèr, however, exists as a result of a tough vintage. 2017 did not exactly go according to plan but ended up producing this gem. The vintage started with damaging spring frost, followed by two brutal hailstorms in August that destroyed roughly half of their Teroldego crop. The damage was so significant that Foradori didn't even make their normal estate Teroldego that year. Instead, with very little left to lose, the family turned the surviving fruit into dozens of experiments, using extremely short macerations of no more than 24 hours and fermenting separate lots in amphora, wood, cement, and stainless steel. They eventually blended the best experiments together and Lezèr was born!
What was essentially an emergency plan turned out to be so delicious that they’ve made it ever since. The name means “light” in the local dialect, and that pretty much tells you what to expect: juicy red fruit, herbs, a little earthiness, and just enough quirkiness to remind you this is a wine made by the Foradori family. Give it a slight chill and enjoy with grilled salmon, beet salad with feta crumbles, or a hearty slice of pecorino.