Italy 2012 - Farnese Harvest

This year will be remembered for its absolute absence of rain; apart from an abundant snowfall at beginning February, the rest of the year was distinguished by the shortage of rain; to give you an idea I can say that since the beginning of June we have only had 2 days of rain (end July), every other day was sunny with constantly high temperatures.

On 6th August we started to pick the Chardonnay grapes in Puglia and the following week we started in Sicily, while in Abruzzo we started on 20th August which is all in line with what we expected, the peculiarity is regarding the other white grapes that we started to harvest this week and the red grapes in Puglia that we started to pick this week, in Sicily we started to pick the grapes last week, at least ¾ weeks early. From the first vinifications we noticed that the grapes have a much

lower percentage of juice which is normally 70% and the grapes also weigh less, the Italian Winemakers' Association has quantified this to be 15%, which makes vintage 2012 one of the poorest of the last 50 years.

In the light of this, it is easy to imagine that we will have very high quality but also an important price increase that of course we cannot absorb as we are coming from a hard vintage already.

I hope this information may be helpful for your work and remind you that I am at your complete disposal for any enquiries.

Kind regards,

Valentino Sciotti

Sales Manager

Farnese Group