With 7,000 bottles made, the 2020 Manzoni Bianco Fórra opens slowly to show honey, glazed almond, apricot and fragrant yellow flower. This is a creamy, full-bodied white that takes a minute or two before those aromas come into full view. Like the other wines in the Lageder family portfolio, this is an organic and biodynamic wine. It sees 10 days of skin maceration in oak casks and is also aged on the lees in oak. Fruit comes from the Paradeis Vineyard in Magré and Pochi vineyards. I imagine a pairing of ravioli made with chestnut flour.

The Alois Lageder 2018 Manzoni Bianco Fórra (with 5,000 bottles made) shows an off-golden color with some faint amber highlights. The wine is perfumed, but not in a pungent or cloying way, with yellow rose, acacia flower and beeswax. Those more abundant fruit tones cede to delicate mineral nuances that give the wine linearity and a good sense of focus. The wine is fermented in oak on the skins for 10 days, and this explains its more saturated color. It then sees an additional nine months of oak aging. Production is 5,000 bottles.

The 2017 Manzoni Bianco Fórra opens to a bright off-gold color and produces aromas of honeysuckle, beeswax and apricot, although all said and done, this wine is rather neutral in terms of its aromas. This is a mid-weight white wine with some glycerin that adds volume and an unctuous texture to the palate that is capped off by drying mineral tones. This wine has the natural substance and heft to pair with white meat or shellfish. It should be interesting to see how this wine fleshes out with a few more years of bottle aging, and I'm willing to bet the score will need to be adjusted up at that time by a couple of points. A mere 6,180 bottles were made.