If you were drinking Italian wine in the ’70s and ’80s, you would have encountered stellar back vintages of Monsecco wines from the ’60s and ’70s. Monsecco was once an important name in Gattinara, but as its importer, Neal Rosenthal, has noted, the brand essentially disappeared from the market. As we’ve noted before in offers of wine from the ‘alto Piemonte’ (upper Piedmont), the Nebbiolo-growing wine zones of this northern region—Gattinara chief among them—were at one time the winemaking powerhouses of Piedmont. Before the First World War, Gattinara was the reference point for great Nebbiolo wines, while commercial bottlings of Barolo and Barbaresco were just beginning to trickle into the market. But as northern Piedmont rapidly industrialized in the years that followed, rural workers left the area in droves. Vineyards were abandoned as there was no one left to work them. Throughout the whole of the alto Piemonte—Gattinara, Ghemme, Lessona, Bramaterra, and other appellations clustered around the Sesia River—vineyard area is a tiny fraction of what it once was. Gattinara, with its red, porphyry-rich soils derived from an ancient volcano, is the largest of these northern Piedmontese DOC(G)s, and it only has about 100 hectares of vineyards in production. That’s 100 hectares total, for the whole appellation.

In the 1990s, the Zanetta family began discussing the herculean task of reviving the Monsecco name. The long process began with purchasing and rehabilitating vineyards and releasing humble, low-priced wines. Over the past few decades, a few single-village releases from neighboring Sizzano and Ghemme crept into the mix. Then, in 2011, I tasted the first new vintage of “prototype” Gattinara and it was delicious, but the Zanetta family continued pushing— first by acquiring an arched-ceiling, circa-1619 nunnery to serve as an aging cellar, and second, with the purchases of parcels in two of Gattinara’s top high-elevation, old-vine crus, “Alice” and “Osso.” The payoff is overwhelmingly evident in today’s wine: Aged for a total of 36 months in barrels (⅔ in large Slavonian casks, ⅓ in second-passage French oak barriques) and another 12 months in bottle before release, this is an archetype of Old School Nebbiolo complexity and brooding power. All of about 100 cases of this wine made it to the US, so we were thrilled to snap up a small fraction of that to share with our subscribers.

Monsecco’s 2013 Gattinara is a return to the classicism and grandeur of Monsecco’s golden era. There’s a powerful sense of focus, detail, and seriousness in each sip. The fruit is luxuriously dark and vivid, there’s a palpable texture and volcanic minerality on the palate, and all elements come together in a perfectly harmonious and integrated symphony. It’s a superb wine, especially when decanted for an hour and served at 55-60 degrees in large Burgundy stems. As with all great Monsecco reds, I can’t stress strongly enough how well this bottle will improve over the next 8-10 years and beyond. 2013 is gorgeously classic vintage in northern Italy that accentuates the structure and lively energy necessary to ensure years of further development in the bottle. So, I’m stashing away a case and I urge you to join me—especially at such a modest price! If enjoying in the near term, please take full advantage of this wine’s youthfully assertive tannins by pouring for a table of friends alongside a platter of sizzling Italian lamb chops. It’s a great “caveman” dish to contrast against such a refined and aristocratic expression of Nebbiolo. Enjoy!