SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch discusses the appeal of Nebbiolo reds from ‘alto Piemonte’ (‘upper Piedmont’) appellations such as Gattinara. When they’re on, they’re some of the most ‘Burgundian’ takes on this sometimes-ferocious, if always noble, Italian variety.
When I put my nose in a glass of this wine, I feel like I’m home. Mind you, this is not because I live in some remote hunting lodge filled with antique furniture and a humidor. It’s because I love the Nebbiolo grape—its mineral savor, its woodsy aromatics, its tension—and this wine is downright prototypical in its expression of that grape. There’s nothing else it could be (if I took blind tasting exams, I’d be thrilled to get this wine) and drinking it is like being wrapped in a warm embrace. I know I’m getting a little rhapsodic here, but this wine is such a spot-on articulation of variety, place, and tradition—for just $34, by the way—I can’t help myself. By now, many of you have turned on to the charms of the ‘Alto Piemonte,’ or upper Piedmont, region: Far north of Barolo and Barbaresco, in the foothills of the Alps separating Italy and Switzerland, a string of tiny wine appellations, including Gattinara, Ghemme, and Fara, produce Nebbiolo-based red wines of more delicate dimensions. Delicate is relative, of course, as this is the one of the brawnier red grapes around, but while many wine lovers are drawn to Barolo because of its kinship with great red Burgundy, it’s the Alto Piemonte versions of Nebbiolo that, for me, feel the most ‘Burgundian.’ This über-classic 2012 from Nervi is one of them. Try it and I’m certain you’ll agree.
The Nervi estate, and the Gattinara appellation, are important pieces of Piedmontese history. Before the two World Wars, Gattinara was vastly more developed as a ‘commercial’ wine zone than Barolo and Barbaresco, but they effectively switched places by the 1960s. The area around Gattinara became heavily industrialized, and these days the historic DOCG zone has as many abandoned vineyards as producing ones. There are only around 100 hectares of vineyards (about 250 acres) in the entire Gattinara DOCG. When I visited the area many years ago, I remember being shocked by that number, and I asked why, given Alto Piemonte’s newfound popularity, there weren’t ‘new’ Gattinara brands popping up left and right. There are countless small landowners in the region, many of them elderly and not inclined to sell. “You’d spend more on lawyers than on the land, and you’d still manage to piece together very little,” one local producer told me.
Nervi, founded in 1906, is one of the original Gattinara stalwarts, and is still in possession of some of the area’s choicest vineyards—28.5 hectares in total, including well-known ‘crus’ such as “Molsino” and “Valferana.” I’ve had many memorable bottles of old Nervi Gattinara, from the “Molsino” vineyard especially (Nervi occasionally still releases library selections), but there was a period when the estate had fallen into disrepair. It was sold in 2011 to a Norwegian investment banker who has restored both the vineyards and the facilities to their former glory, reviving one of the great names in Piedmontese Nebbiolo.
Gattinara reds go through a similar aging regimen to Barolo—35 months minimum, compared to 38 for Barolo, with Gattinara spending a minimum of 24 of those months in wood barrels compared to 18 for Barolo. Gattinara, however, is not required to be 100% Nebbiolo, but must contain a minimum of 90% of the variety; Nervi’s, perhaps not surprisingly, is 100% Nebbiolo aged in large Slavonian oak botti for three years, followed by a short period in concrete vats and yet another year in bottle before release. Erling Astrup, the owner of Nervi, has been resolute in keeping production methods as they have been for more than 100 years, retaining longtime enologist Enrico Fileppo, who has run the Nervi cellar since 1982.
The northerly positioning of Gattinara, combined with its volcanic soils, leads to a gentler, more perfumed, somewhat ethereal style of Nebbiolo in comparison to Barolo (one thing you’ll notice right off the bat is its 13.5% alcohol, a full degree lower than just about every Barolo). In the glass, it’s a reflective crimson red with garnet and brick-orange highlights at the rim, with perfumed aromas of dried cherry, slightly underripe strawberry, dried orange peel, black tea, leather, and damp underbrush. It is brisk and linear on the palate, with a firm but not aggressive tannic structure—there’s a kinship to some Côte de Nuits Burgundies here, although the overall profile still skews more earthbound and ‘masculine.’ It opens up nicely after about 45 minutes in a decanter, but it is structured to age further—and I think its real sweet spot is about 3-5 years down the line. Its flavor profile makes me think of hunter’s food, like game birds (I’m not a hunter myself, but can go online to
D’Artagnan as well as the next guy). I keep saying I’m going to get some guinea hens to roast; maybe now’s the time.
Cin-cin! — D.L.
