It’s impossible not to be drawn to the heroic wine cultures of places like Côte-Rôtie, Ribeira Sacra, or today’s region of interest, Valtellina. Their wines are as hard-won as wine gets—and as distinctive as the forbidding landscapes that produce them.
The vineyards of Valtellina, which sit in the shadow of the Rhaetic Alps along Italy’s border with Switzerland, aren’t merely “hillside” vineyards: Valtellina is a sheer rock wall with vineyards that cling to it for dear life, with hand-laid stone terraces keeping everything from sliding down to the Adda River Valley below. Today’s 2012 from the Valtellina’s “Sassella” vineyard—one of the region’s acknowledged ‘grand crus’—was painstakingly wrought from 50-year-old vines dug deep into rocks and sand, only to then be aged five years in barrel and bottle before it was released into the market! A lot has been invested here, and what a payoff: AR.PE.PE. ranks among Italy’s greatest interpreters of the Nebbiolo grape. Barolo and Barbaresco may still be the stars, but, thanks in large part to AR.PE.PE., the more finessed, lower-alcohol Nebbiolos of Valtellina have catapulted to fame and landed in collectors’ cellars next to their Piedmontese cousins. Despite their remote origins and relative scarcity, these long-aging gems remain reasonably priced. Have I rhapsodized about this wine enough? I could go on (and will below), but what I really want to do is open another bottle of this Sassella “Stella Retica.” It is a showstopper.
The siblings who run AR.PE.PE—Isabella, Emanuele, and Guido Pelizzati Pérego—estimate that it requires about 1,500 person-hours to farm a single hectare of vines over the course of a growing season. No doubt producers in Côte-Rôtie can relate: The two regions share many similarities, right down to the family names emblazoned on the terrace walls, visible from way down in the valley below. The vineyards of Valtellina contain a highly variable, extremely rocky mix of alluvial gravel, sand, granite, and limestone since a lot of the material used to construct the terraces in the first place was hauled up from the banks of the Adda River below. Because the Adda follows an East-West path, vineyards are planted only along the north bank, giving them full-south, all-day sun exposures in a climate that might otherwise be too cool to ripen grapes—especially the late-ripening Nebbiolo (called Chiavennasca in these parts). Just to the north are the snow-capped peaks of the Swiss Alps.
In the recent history of Italian wine, I can think of few producers that have catapulted to fame like AR.PE.PE. They, along with Valtellina contemporaries such as Nino Negri, Sandro Fay, Mamete Prevostini, and many others have introduced the wine world to a totally distinctive expression of the Nebbiolo variety—one defined more by finesse and ethereal perfume as opposed to raw power. The intensity of the tannin/alcohol combination in Valtellina is tamped down somewhat, as you might expect in a marginal mountain climate such as this.
AR.PE.PE.’s beautiful subterranean winery sits amid (and underneath) the vineyards of Grumello, which is one of the officially delimited subzones, or “crus,” of the Valtellina Superiore appellation (AR.PE.PE. is short for Arturo Pelizzatti Pérego, Isabella’s father, who sold his family brand to another winery back in the early 1980s, only to later decide to re-enter the wine business, on a smaller scale, a few years later; the acronym was created to avoid confusion). Valtellina was once an important trade route through one of the few passages through the Alps, but it is ultimately a tiny wine region, spanning only about 300 hectares of vines along a 30-mile stretch of the Adda. In addition to Grumello, there are four other officially delimited vineyards under the Valtellina DOCG umbrella: Inferno, Valgella, Sassella, and Maroggia. All these sites have a multiplicity of owners farming and bottling wines from them (as in Burgundy), and for a wine to be called Valtellina Superiore with a vineyard designation, it must be comprised of at least 90% Nebbiolo from said vineyard and be aged a total of 24 months (12 of which must be in wood barrels) before release.
Today’s 2012, called “Stella Retica” and coming from some of AR.PE.PE.’s oldest plots in Sassella, is the product of garden-scale viticulture and a resolutely old school approach in the cellar. 100% Nebbiolo was left to macerate on its skins for an epic 51 days during fermentation, then spent two years in large oak barrels (50-hectoliter capacity). Further aging was carried out in concrete tanks and then in bottle before its initial release in 2017, and still this wine is just getting started. In the glass it’s a deep, brick-tinged garnet-red, with aromas that make you feel like you’re picking berries in the woods: raspberry, black cherry, and cranberry scents are followed by an earthy wave of tobacco leaf, rose petals, fennel, sage, tar, leather, and black tea. The wine is just north of medium in body, with wooly tannins, tangy acidity, and long, lingering finish tinged with a hint of smoke. It’s kind of a Gevrey-Chambertin/Barbaresco love child, unmistakably Nebbiolo in its mineral savor but lifted and finessed in a way many Barolo/Barbaresco wines are not. If you are enjoying a bottle soon, decant it 45-60 minutes before serving in large Burgundy stems at 60 degrees (the cooler temperature will accentuate the aromatics and the fruit component). Otherwise, lay some bottles down for a lengthy slumber—AR.PE.PE. wines have a track record of great longevity, but regardless of when you choose to open one, know that this is not a “cocktail” red: It requires food, preferably something earthy, hearty, and somewhat “Alpine” in nature. You’re more likely to see
tartiflette on the other side of the Alps, but man would it be good with this wine. Enjoy!
