For the December edition of Reveler’s Hour Wine Club, we’re bringing you one of Italy’s greatest grapes and winter’s finest wines – Nebbiolo – reimagined as Spanna and Chiavennasca, lighter, brighter, higher toned, and more approachable but equally long-lived and profound as the Barolos and Barbarescos that steal the headlines.
Nebbiolo is an ancient grape referenced as far back as the 13th century. Not unlike Pinot Noir, it is famous for refinement and fussiness along with its kaleidoscopic power to transmit a distinct sense of place from one vineyard to the next. Nebbiolo’s most famous modern expression is in the Langhe subregion of Piedmont, home to Barolo and Barbaresco. But historically, the villages two hours to the north in the Alto-Piemonte (“high foot of the mountains”) were more renowned.
The region has experienced a dramatic revival over the last decade with vineyard acreage increasing for the first time in generations. As global tastes have shifted to lower alcohol, food friendly wines of place, the Alto-Piemonte has reemerged on the international radar. Its greatest treasures are no longer well-kept secrets, but the wines still deserve a broader audience. They combine poise, precision, sophistication, soulfulness, approachability, and potential as well as any category I can think of.
Nebbiolo, “Pratogrande,” Monsecco, Colli Novaresi, Italy, 2017
Vespolina Blend, “Uvenere,” Paride Iaretti, Gattinara, Italy, 2017
Fara, “Bartön,” Boniperti, Alto-Piemonte, Italy, 2015
Gattinara Riserva, Paride Iaretti, Alto-Piemonte, Italy, 2015
Rosso di Valtellina, Balgera, Lombardy, Italy, 2006
Rosso di Valtellina, Ar.Pe.Pe., Lombardy, Italy, 2016
In Bill’s recap email, he said this:
Transportive, age-worthy wines abound in these historic but forgotten corners of Piedmont and Lombardy. From Gattinara to Fara to Valtellina, Nebbiolo shines in a different light, more willowy, loose-limbed, and graceful, like a ballerina ascending to the heavens.
It’s fitting that Nebbiolo goes by different names in this altered state. These are wines every bit as fully realized and profound as the Barolos and Barbarescos further south. While recognizable as kin, Spanna and Chiavennasca deserve much more than supporting player status within the Italian wine pantheon. They are stars in their own right.
While the Alto-Piemonte was largely untouched by the Langhe’s late century culture clashes, it is worth starting in Barolo to understand more about how the two regions differ. Megan Headly explains:
With thin skins, high acid, high tannin, early bud breaks that must endure springtime hail, and a late harvest that’s a race against heavy rain and dropping temperatures, Nebbiolo grapes have the deck stacked against them . . . Thin-skinned grapes mean low color extraction, so for maximum extraction, traditional producers employ a three-week maceration period. Then, they slowly soften the teeth-furring tannins that result from extended maceration through several years of aging in large oak (usually Slovenian) casks. This method ensures imperceptible oak, but with the minimum aging requirement (two years in oak, one year in bottle) not even coming close to taming the wines’ wayward tannins and acidity, the process can also lead to withered fruit and oxidation.
Barolo’s modern innovators pursued shorter macerations, stainless steel fermenters, smaller French barrels, and new oak to tame these fierce tannins and deliver more approachable, fruity forward wines to the market. This became a major source of contention for traditionalists who protested that the new wines tasted more ubiquitously modern than they did like Nebbiolo. This was never an issue further north, because Spanna never delivers the same astringency or alcohol as Barolo or even Barbaresco. Taming fierce tannins is less of a concern, so most winemakers in the Alto-Piemonte and Valtellina continue to work with long macerations and larger, neutral barrels.
As for other flights of fancy:
– The Wine Scholar Guild discovers Alto-Piemonte.
– SevenFifty chronicles the wine industry’s renaissance in the shadow of the Italian Alps.
– Jancis assesses the history of vineyard classification in Gattinara.
– Forbes beautifully appraises Valtellina.
– SevenFifty covers the “Science of Oxidation”.
– Some guy with a blog to his name delivers a remarkably cogent look at oak barrel sizes.