I ought to start today’s piece with a translation. Not a direct translation from Italian to English but instead from our Veneto dialect to the proper term in Italian and then to English.

Sora = sopra = above. Cuna = culla = crib.

Thus the phrase “andar de sora cuna” means to go and visit a newborn baby and congratulate the parents.

Daniele Delaini and his wife Chiara created this wine in 2017 and they chose to dedicate it to their firstborn Anna who arrived in the same year.

This is a bottle of wine that Daniele gave me during a visit to Villa Calicantus in December 2022 and that I promptly squirreled away for when my own newborn had made his entrance into the world.

The Villa Calicantus winery was founded in 2011 when Daniele returned from Paris to take charge of the family holdings. He knew from the start that he wanted to work organically and make natural wines and then he started with biodynamic agriculture in 2014. There are now 8 hectares of vineyards, making an annual production of somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 bottles.

Soracuna is their most simple Bardolino red wine. They make rosé (most years with the status of Chiaretto di Bardolino DOC, but not always) in both still and sparkling expressions. The sparkling Sollazzo is perfect for summer aperitifs whilst the still Chiar’otto can have remarkable potential for ageing.

The Soracuna wine is made of corvina, rondinella and molinara grapes with just a touch of merlot, fermented and aged for six months in cement tanks. Upon first opening, it was rather reduced but the next day (or sooner if I had wanted to get out the carafe), it had opened up and started expressing its true character.

It’s a linear wine, direct and focussed, which expresses the minerality of the morainic hills. It is unusual because when we talk about red wines, we usually look for tannins, body etc, not minerality, but this wine speaks a different language. It has fruit characters – forest fruits – and spice but are conveyed in a very light, delicate style. It’s a wine which pairs with fish rather than meat – in our case a beautiful line-caught sea bass in “acqua pazza.” Incidentally, it’s also the perfect wine for a new mum who, after 9 months of abstinence and three weeks of very limited sleep, wouldn’t be able to appreciate anything heavier either in structure or in alcohol content. (It’s just 11% abv.)

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Quick disclaimer to clear my conscience and nib any potential accusations of impropriety in the bud:

1. I first met Daniele in 2018 (or was it 2017?) at a wine fair in Finland where we were both exhibitors. It turns out that he left Paris just as I arrived so even though we moved in similar circles, we probably missed each other. 2. I am currently on maternity leave from the PR agency Studio Cru which counts the Consorzio di Bardolino and Chiaretto as a client. 3. Villa Calicantus is a member of the VinNatur Association since 2022. 4. The aforementioned winery visit in December 2022 was far more personal than professional in nature; the number of children present (when you include the one that was yet to be born) equalled that of the adults!

These multiple conflicts of interest would normally be reason for me to leave a wide berth but in this case, the pull to choose this particular wine was just too strong. As I sit here cuddling my rainbow baby and exchanging messages with a good friend who is in hospital waiting for her own late miscarriage to pass, it feels appropriate to affront the taboo and address how difficult maternity can be. The process of conceiving and carrying a baby for nine months is far more unpredictable than society makes it seem. Reaching the finish line is not something to be taken for granted and therefore when you do finally take home a happy, healthy baby, it is a valid cause for celebration.

If you know of any other winery that actually has a wine dedicated – not simply named after their children – but to the act of welcoming a newborn, I’ll happily have a taste.

Tasted on April 10th 2023

Price: €