Nonino Grappa Vuisnar Riserva (700 ml)

When Orazio Nonino founded the Percoto distillery in 1897, grappa was a peasant by-product distilled from whatever pomace remained. It was his granddaughter-in-law Giannola and husband Benito who broke that paradigm in 1973 by separating individual Friulian grape varieties — beginning with the near-extinct Picolit — and distilling each alone in bespoke copper steam discontinuous stills, creating the Monovitigno® category that did not legally exist before Nonino lobbied it into Italian spirits law. The Vuisnar Riserva draws on selected Friulian pomace varieties sourced from the Percoto estate and surrounding Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where the northeastern continental climate — cold winters, warm summers, and the Bora wind — concentrates aromatic compounds in the grape skins that survive into the distillate. Fresh, destalked pomace arrives at the distillery within one hour of pressing and enters fermentation immediately, driven by residual wine-fermentation yeast over approximately five days, preserving volatile esters that silo storage would destroy. Distillation proceeds in slow batch runs through Benito Nonino's handcrafted copper stills with precise head-and-tail cuts, then the spirit enters a rotation of Nevers, Limousin, Grésigne oak, ex-Sherry, ex-Sauternes barriques, Acacia, wild Cherry, Ash, and Pear wood casks — an unusually diverse wood portfolio that no standard grappa house replicates at this scale. What sets Vuisnar Riserva apart is that multi-species cask aging: where most riserva grappas rely on a single French oak regime, Nonino layers complementary wood signatures across 2,620 small casks housed in seven dedicated warehouses, bottled with zero color additives.