Azienda Agricola Ferghettina

– Franciacorta

We just write the word Ferghettina and two things happen, first we just feel a little happier, a little lighter and a wee bit smilier inside and secondly we need to take a short break whilst we pull a bottle out of the always handy box and put it into the fridge door ready for this evening.

Right… ready again.

I was about to write the word ‘producers’ but Laura and Matteo are not ‘producers’, they are friends, friends who we’ve known and worked with for around 12 years now, friends who just happen to make a very convincing proportion of the finest wines available from Franciacorta. These guys have worked so hard over the years to get to where they are now and one thing that always strikes you is that they have unquestioningly and instinctively put in the hardest of the yards in the pursuit of quality for their ‘entry’ wine. The N/V Brut is quite simply exemplary, it’s a truly very lovely, absolutely charming bottle of serious fizz that will easily retail for little more than £20. Anyone who drinks it will be completely delighted, will immediately sense the integrity of the estate and will be in absolutely no doubt about the quality and excitement they are going to find if they venture up through the range at some time in the future. It’s academic as you’ll probably be as disciplined as we are but the Brut also ages beautifully. 

Pas Dose is Tre Bicchieri this year and quite spectacular… nicely authoritative at first, discreetly generous as you begin to get to know each other.  Saten arrives in its very seductive little black dress for the first time, there’s even halves available in the square bottle as well this year. Milledi and Rose have never been nicer… This is an estate where things don’t stand still and standards just rise and rise with every year. 

If you had two or three children you wouldn’t tell anyone that you had a favourite and so it would be if we had just two or three agencies in this list … But we have 30…ish on these pages so the rules are different… This is our favourite!