Valli Unite – Ottavio Rube Vino Rosso

“Are these the actual hands that made the wine?”

It was a rhetorical question. In the way that any comment on Instagram could even jokingly be considered as rhetorical.

I used to mock Instagram as a mere photographer’s crutch; the purview of hipsters who could’t pass a plate of food without whipping out their iPhone to document every last morsel. Live in the moment people!!!

Despite my misgivings, I’ve crumbled and finally started to use Instagram for something more than fancying up photos of blurry wine bottles. Well, actually no I haven’t. All I seem to do is fancy up photos of wine bottles. #instawine anyone?

Anyhow, I wasn’t expecting anyone to know the owner of the mitts on the bottle of Valli Unite Ottavio Rube Vino Rosso that I tasted at the recent Le Caveau artisan wine tasting.

But lo and behold, amid a flurry of #hashtags, a few days later came a reply:

“I surely believe that those are the hands of Ottavio, who is one of the founders of Valli Unite.

Making wine is a long process with several pairs of hands though.“

Light/medium bodied; expressive; fresh cherry and savoury plummy fruit; full of energy – this blend of Dolcetto and Croatina produced by a co-op of families in the Colli Tortonesi in south eastern Piemonte was delicious and, at €13.65, is good value. It wasn’t particularly long (does it need to be at this price?) and didn’t have the ‘oomph’ that some people might want in their wine (beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all), but I loved it.

Something about knowing that these calloused hands have actually been involved in the laborious growing and winemaking process endears it to me even more – it adds a certain honesty and integrity to the wine; these are nebulous concepts perhaps, but they are factors that I am coming to appreciate more and more in wine, and they are exemplified in many of the wines imported by Le Caveau.

Valli Unite wines are available in Ireland from Le Caveau in Kilkenny.