Please, how to say "passito" in english?

How about "raisiny"? That would apply to fruit more than wine. A wine described as "passito" would probably be either past plateau, over the hill, past prime, dried out - I think you get the idea. Too bad it wasn't consumed a few years ago.

Although Amarones are made from grapes that are somewhat dried, I doubt that they would be described as "passito". (Mike Tommasi would know, I'll bet.)

Tom S

Well, I should have specified it myself: I don't mean a defect in grape/wine, I mean wines obtained from grapes which have been dried just like for Amarone, or for the famous "Passito di pantelleria", made with Zibibbo grapes, or ohter sweet (often with added alcohol) golden dessert wines.

Vilco

It very much depends whether you refer to a certain wine or rather wine-making method.

M.

In that case I would not translate "passito" but simply explain the method.

M.

"Oxford Companion to Wine" translates as "dried grape wine", and that sounds good to me. Having said that, most people who care probably would not need a translation.

Don't really concur with Tom S at all. It has nothing to do with wine being past it. I guess the grapes would be raisiny, and maybe the wine might taste raisiny, but rainsiny does not really cpature the word when applied to wine. And Amarone is the classic example of a passito.

Ah, that's interesting. I had heard of picking the "ears" of clusters, but had no idea that was done to make Amarone. I'd assumed it was for the top Brunellos, Barolos or Chiantis - but maybe that's not the case.

I can't even imagine picking my own grapes - let alone ears of clusters. Even here in California the vines are trained too close to the ground for me and my weak back to do that for any length of time. :^(

Tom S

Of course you don't, Tom. That's what you get those idealistic young college students for: to do the backbreaking labor for a farthing in pursuit of experience in the trade. Hey, it works for the Bordelais, ne c'est pas? :P

Mark Lipton

Interesting. But then how did the term Reccioto come to apply only to some wines of the region?

LOL! Mark, I'd say it's been awhile since you've been either a student in California or visited the vineyards during crush. All the pickers are migrant workers from Mexico - and have been for decades. I'm pretty sure they aren't going to college in their "spare time". :^/

Tom S

That would be Recioto... sorry to be picky. The masculine ending "oto" is, how would you describe this, the contrary of a diminutive. Indicating a large bunch. The word "ear" is actually a feminine noun, "recia". The word for bunch of grapes is masculine, "recio". A large bunch would be a "recioto".

Why the name only describes these wines? I don't know.

There is another etymology that seems plausible, where Recioto would be a contraction of a word meaning "from the Retic area", "oto" also being an ending indicating provenance (ex., in Venetian, a person from Chioggia, or Ciosa, is a Ciosoto). The Retic Alps are the group just to the west of the Carnia area (the italian counterpart of Carynthia)

It may be impossible to find the real origin.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

"Mark Lipton" in news: snipped-for-privacy@purdue.edu...

A gentleman (the word is very meaningful in this case) from Europe, whose contributions to California winemaking I much admire, and whom I could not possibly name, with what I am about to say, recently described experience with occupational injuries in different countries' wine industries. The specific injury was something like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome but I'm unsure -- something from repetitive motion, anyway. His point was that people in the US doing certain winemaking tasks tended to get this particular injury (itself a minor US industry complete with books and TV talk-show commentators) while employees doing the *identical* task in Europe did not get the same condition somehow. (He gave one of those wry looks that you get in such situations.)

Conclusion: Work in Europe, it's safer.