There’s a triumphant feeling that comes over you when you catch a great wine in its “sweet spot.” It’s the same kind of feeling you get when you eat a perfectly ripe heirloom tomato in August, hit a golf ball so squarely it barely makes a sound, or do whatever qualifies as one of “life’s little victories” in your book.
Today’s beautifully perfumed red from Rivetti & Lauro is a bottle to enjoy slowly, thoughtfully, and ideally, with the comfort of knowing there’s another one waiting in the wings behind it. For those who love the Nebbiolo grape as grown on the terraces of Italy’s Valtellina region, the “Sassella” vineyard is one of the most important sub-zones in this tiny appellation, an Italian equivalent to a French
grand cru; Rivetti & Lauro’s 2012 from this hallowed site artfully illustrates how, when it comes to wine, structure and size are not the same thing—which is to say, a wine need not be “big” to age well. Nebbiolo can often be very tannic and high in alcohol, but in the Valtellina, which hugs Italy’s border with Switzerland, both of those components are dialed back. “Uí Vigna 298” is a Nebbiolo driven by the same kind of finesse, freshness and aromatic complexity found in great red Burgundy—arguably the world’s best example of a lighter wine with longevity—and it’s in a great place right now after some significant bottle age. The best part? There’s still more graceful evolution ahead of it. Getting it at this price is a victory in my book!
Rivetti & Lauro is a relatively new estate in the Valtellina. It was founded in 2010 by Alberto Rivetti and Dino Lauro, the latter a veteran of the local wine scene who spent 20 years at the iconic Nino Negri winery. Their cellars are housed in an 18th-century palazzo in the village of Tirano, a few kilometers east of the Valtellina’s anchor city, Sondrio. Their vineyard holdings include parcels in many of the region’s best-known vineyard sites, all of which sit on steep terraces in the cavernous Adda River Valley. The dizzyingly steep vineyards strongly resemble those of Côte-Rôtie, even down to the names of different wine producers painted on those hand-laid stone walls.
Valtellina was once an important trade route through one of the few passages through the Rhaetic 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 the Sassella cru, there are four other officially delimited vineyards under the Valtellina DOCG umbrella: Inferno, Valgella, Grumello, 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 attached, it must be comprised of at least 90% Nebbiolo from said vineyard and be aged a total of 24 months (at least 12 of which must be in wood barrels) before release.
Rivetti & Lauro’s “Uí Vigna 298” spent two years aging in a mix of 30-hectoliter Slavonian oak casks and smaller French oak
barriques before bottling. It has now had ample time to integrate its wood component and achieve a beautiful balance of fruit, florals, minerality, and oak-derived spice. In the glass, it has a still-youthful ruby-garnet core moving to pink and orange at the rim, and after some time open (decant it at least 30 minutes and preferably an hour before serving), it unleashes a torrent of aromas ranging from dried black cherry, wild strawberry, blood orange, rose petals, tea leaves, baking spices, and underbrush. Whereas a lot of Valtellina reds can be a little lean and leathery, this has some impressive mid-palate fruit to complement its more earthy, spicy elements. Texturally, the wine is very fine and silky but still firm, which bodes well for further aging—it’s going to be something to behold on its 10th birthday and should continue to age well for 5-7 years beyond that. It’s also a wine that benefits greatly from a cooler serving temperature—you won’t believe how exponentially better it is at 60 degrees rather than 70. Its Burgundian proportions make it a good option for one of my favorite Burgundy pairings—black truffle-stuffed chicken—but if you want to go full Valtellina on this, you need to make a buckwheat pasta called
pizzoccheri. This will definitely put the fat-cutting freshness of Nebbiolo to proper use. Enjoy!
