THE OENOLOGICAL SELECTION

The selection activity, carried out thanks to the precious collaboration of the Chamber of Commerce’s Chemical Laboratory, has the primary purpose of giving visibility to the best oenological production of our province and of being the starting point to narrate, with this volume, one of the most significant aspects and profound traditions of our territory. The aim is spreading the knowledge of the wineries that have chosen quality as their objective.

Participation is reserved to all producers with headquarters and/or production units and/or vineyards in the province of Torino and, limited to the denominations of origin of the territory, also to winemakers subject to control plans, who transform grapes produced by vine growers operating in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Chambers of Commerce of Torino, Cuneo, Biella and Vercelli.

These are the production territories included in the specifications of the admitted wines (Erbaluce di Caluso, Carema, Canavese, Freisa di Chieri, Collina Torinese, Pinerolese and Valsusa). According to a criterion of environmental and cultural homogeneity, the different areas of production can be divided into four distinct wine-growing zones in the provincial territory: Canavese, the Torino hills, the Pinerolo area and the Valle di Susa. The samples presented by producers were examined, in strictly anonymous form, by committees composed, for each session, of a minimum of five to a maximum of seven members enrolled in the registers of technicians and expert tasters of the Chamber of Commerce of Torino, already called periodically to be part of tasting commission for the DOC and DOCG wines from the province. The experience and knowledge of our wines recognised to the members, together with the guaranteed anonymization, are such as to best ensure the necessary expertise and independence of judgment. The initiative is, in fact, an opportunity to go beyond the assessment of suitability (necessary to participate in the selection) and, therefore, to increase the “knowledge” of wines, tracing their distinctive qualities and assigning them a score. Each member of the commission has recorded their evaluations on appropriate cards according to the sensory analysis method “Union Internationale des Oenologues”. For the collection and verification of samples produced by the participating companies, the Chamber of Commerce used its Chemical Laboratory, whose activities and institutional aims are presented in the following pages. The Chamber of Commerce has directly managed the anonymization of wine samples to be submitted to the tasting commission, hosting its sessions and then following all the phases of the commissioners’ work including the reporting on the results.

For three consecutive days, from 28 to 30 May 2018, 16 members of the tasting commission met, coordinated by officials from the Chamber of Commerce, to evaluate, in 9 tasting sessions, as many as 156 wine samples from 46 different producers in the province.

On each tested sample, the Commission, based on the selection regulations, expressed a collegial judgment on a single card drawn up by the Commission’s President and countersigned by all the members. The result was calculated by taking the arithmetic average of the valuations expressed individually by each member, and eliminating the highest and the lowest score. Compared to previous editions, this year the selected wines will no longer be presented according to the three distinct ranges of merit provided for by the regulation: good from 80 to 84/100, very good from 85 to 89/100, excellent from 90/100.