The first Zibibbo beer, all from Calabria, invades the United States
Cantine Benvenuto’s Sole Calabro is the first beer with Zibibbo grapes, a slow food precursor.
Fully Calabrian product, the first beer in Italy to be produced using Zibibbo grapes. It’s been in production for two years and has already begun to sweep across America. It’s called Sole Calabro, and it’s a Cantine Benvenuto beer, created by the adventurous spirit of Giovanni Celeste Benvenuto, the chair of Slow Food.
The result is an unfiltered amber beer, born from the introduction of dried grapes within the batch which, by giving sugars, increases the alcohol content and body of the beer giving all those hints, that aromatic group, typical of a zeppebo. An all-Italian style of beer, IGA, Italian Grape Ale, along with a product that tells the territory of Calabria, in a more international version.
Sole Calabro was born a little over two years ago from this impulse of wanting to tell a typical produce of a province, Zibibbo, which in Francavilla Angitola, a town overlooking Pizzo Calabro, has a thousand-year history. Grapes that have always been used to produce dry wine Cantine Benvenuto was the first to restore ancient traditions, making Zibibbo IGP wine in Calabria.
Giovanni Celeste Benvenuto says: “The desire was and continues to tell the zibibbo in different directions, and thus the desire to experience. I who, in addition to the wine world, love everything related to spirits and beer, wanted to try it. It is a beer that was immediately admired, both in terms of the aspect of flavour, because it is a beer that preserves the bitterness but also many flavors that evoke zebibo, and then because it is able to fuse, with its authenticity and gentleness on the palate, with the first courses, with grilled meats, not Only with pizza.
Sole Calabro has succeeded in its interpretation in clearing national borders by air travel abroad: an exclusive export collaboration has recently arisen with More Than Grapes in Illinois and with another importer also in New York. Following the success of Zibibbo in the New York Times, Cantine Benvenuto beer also made its way to the states to tell Francavilla Angitola around the world.
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