For wine drinkers who love Barolo and its Nebbiolo grape, the renaissance underway elsewhere in Nebbiolo’s home region of Piedmont has been welcomed with open arms. The revival of wine regions in the “Alto Piemonte,” which fan out around the city of Novara about 60 miles north of Barolo, has exposed us to Nebbiolo’s gentler, prettier side.
It’s not that Barolo can’t be pretty (it very much can), but it isn’t often gentle. By contrast, today’s Bramaterra from La Palazzina eschews Nebbiolo’s characteristically high tannins and alcohol in favor of Pinot Noir-ish silkiness. Yes, it’s had the benefit of some bottle age, but it’s clear that this wine was never massive—nor did it need to be. Great red Burgundy is not a “big” wine, either, and what we’re seeing from the Alto Piemonte are wines which, while not as structured as their Barolo/Barbaresco counterparts, are capable of both greatness and longevity. Noble grape varieties are like that, and in appellations such as Bramaterra, revelatory wines like today’s 2011 are popping up with greater frequency. This is impeccably balanced, elegant Nebbiolo that still has 10-15 years of positive evolution ahead of it, maybe more. Bramaterra and its neighbors have yet to command the big dollars, but after tasting today’s wine, I can assure you: That won’t last. So, let’s all revel in this gorgeous, well-priced ’11 before everyone else catches on—get in line behind me!
At one time, a century ago, the Alto Piemonte was blanketed with vineyards and was Piedmont’s commercial winemaking epicenter. A combination of phylloxera, the exodus of workers to industrial jobs in Turin and Milan, and two World Wars all but wiped it out. One
article I read put total vineyard plantings in the area at around 40,000 hectares, of which only about 1,000 hectares remain today. The biggest of the Alto Piemonte DOC(G) zones is Gattinara, with about 100 hectares of vineyards currently in production, but most of the others are truly tiny.
Bramaterra, which is sandwiched between Gattinara and Lessona west of the Sesia River, has a total of about 30 hectares of vines. Soils are a mix of sand, clay, and quartz-rich volcanic material from the “Valsesia supervolcano,” which is believed to have erupted 290 million years ago, before the formation of the Alps. Bramaterra is not the name of an anchor town but an abridged way of saying “a yearning for the earth,” and I, for one, can very much get down with drinking a wine from the “Yearning for the Earth” appellation—especially when it’s as good as this one!
The La Palazzina wine estate extends over 3.5 hectares, and while the family, vineyards, and buildings all go back much further than that, the wine “brand” was launched by Leonardo Montà in 1986. Leonardo’s son, Paolo, works with him in both the cellar and vineyards, while his daughter, Francesca, is a graphic artist who designs the labels. Depicted on the label of today’s wine is a 17th-century palazzo, the estate’s centerpiece, which has been in the Montà family since the 1930s.
The vineyard source for today’s 2011 Bramaterra covers 2.4 hectares in the commune of Roasio, in soils of porphyric volcanic sand. As is typical of the Bramaterra DOC, this is not a “varietal” Nebbiolo but a blend of 80% Nebbiolo with smaller percentages of the local grapes Croatina, Vespolina, and Uva Rara. It was aged for 48 months in 35-hectoliter Slavonian oak botti, then another 12 months in bottle before release. Now with a few more years of bottle age under its belt, it has entered a glorious phase—aromatic, fine-tuned, and bright.
Whereas many Alto Piemonte reds display more of the earthy, leathery side of Nebbiolo, this ’11 has ample fruit to complement its savory component. In the glass, it’s a vibrant garnet red with pink and just the slightest hint of orange at the rim—a very healthy, star-bright color for a Nebbiolo of this age. Perfumed aromas of ripe red cherries, juicy wild strawberries, rose petals, pink peppercorns, blood orange peel, underbrush, and crushed stones leap from the glass and carry over to the palate. It is medium-bodied and still fresh and lively, with ripe and very fine tannins that have loosened whatever drying grip they may have had. The acidity and depth of fruit will serve this wine well over the next 10-15 years, as it takes on all those heady, woodsy “secondary” notes the Nebbiolo grape is famous for: leather, truffles, wet leaves, smoke, and tar. Decant this about 30-45 minutes before serving in Burgundy stems and marvel at how it continues to evolve in the glass over the course of a meal. It is, without a doubt, one of the most “Burgundian” Nebbiolo wines I’ve had in quite a while—no, I’m not going to suggest pairing it with French food, but I’m getting pretty close with the attached recipe from Piedmont’s next-door neighbor, the Valle d’Aosta.
Buon appetito!
