La Crotta de Tanteun e Marietta di Federico Marcoz

The Crotta de Tanteun e Marietta was founded in 2012 and is the first winery to produce in the centre of the city of Aosta.The company, located in an eighteenth-century courtyard, works inside a building where one of the most important mills of the city – the Ressaz mill – can be admired, thus making the areas set up for wine production even more attractive and of great emotional impact.

The idea which saw the creation of the firm can be found in the company name, “La Crotta de Tanteun e Marietta”, indeed the owner’s great-grandfather Tanteun (real name, Costantino Charrère), bequeathed the space where the winery is, and had the foresight to keep the old mill protected; while the passion for vineyards and wine came from his great-grandmother Marietta (Maria Borney) who left a small plot of land which had been planted with vines, in exchange for a promise to replant the vineyard; so from childhood the producer had thus come into contact with the world of wine-making and can still remember the first harvests with friends and the first experiments with wine-making in the cellar at home.

So test after test, and thanks also to the important help of Costantino Charrère of the “Les Cretes” company and the invaluable consultancy of the oenologist Pietro Boffa, La Crotta de Tanteun e Marietta currently works two hectares of old vineyards, broken up into 20 plots of between 200 and 4,000 square metres, for 35 km along the centre of the Aosta Valley, between the municipalities of Châtillon and Villeneuve, and produces 10,000 bottles of D.O.P. wine from them, divided into four types:

• Muscat - Vallée d’Aoste Muscat Petit Grain D.O.P.
  Bouquet of sage, thyme and aromatic herbs wrapped up in a morainic mineral breath from the ancient glacier. Savoury and deep like the mountain and pure winter air. Muscat says something about us. Muscat is the Aosta Valley. (Alberto Levi)
• Bizelle - Vallée d’Aoste Pinot Gris D.O.P.
  It has a strong copper colour with a bouquet which shifts from wild white flowers to orange blossom, from sweet notes of yellow fruit to the fresh and savoury contrast of granite and sand. It has a citrus and salty palate. It is mineral like the land from which it springs, and elegant as only simplicity can aspire to be. (Alberto Levi)
• Farouche - Vallée d’Aoste Rouge D.O.P.
  Character and subtle exuberance comes from this wine, the product of the land and its interpreters, who have best known how to express their identity. Bouquet of currants and small red fruits of the forest, violets, cherries, damp ground and a rocky, salty breath which stays in the palate for a long finish. It paws the tannin like a wild horse masterfully tamed by his groom. (Alberto Levi)
• R.E.M.- Vallée d’Aoste Pinot Noir D.O.P.
  Its colour is brilliant, but not intense, and the wine quickly shows its feminine elegance, which can be seen from the aromas of musk and wild strawberries wrapped in the area’s classic, subtle rocky feel. A balsamic aroma shows an autumnal nose and a fresh and citrusy taste made up of bergamot and raspberry which involves the senses and surprises with every sip. (Alberto Levi)