Back in the days when I ran an all-Italian wine list, I could offer page after page of reds that not only ranked among the best in the world but provided enough stylistic diversity for any taste. With whites, it was more difficult. Neither the heavy-hitter wine consumer nor my fellow sommeliers had much respect for Italian whites, whose often-enormous commercial success didn’t lend them seriousness. Many producers responded with wines from “international” varieties (especially Chardonnay), but these days the Italian whites commanding the most respect are from native grapes.
Today’s wine, from Piedmont’s Timorasso variety, is an example of an Italian white with higher aspirations—namely, to play with the “big boys” of France, Germany, Austria, etc. Wine producers in Piedmont, who’ve already got several well-known whites in their quiver, think that Timorasso is going to be “the one.” Famed Barolo-maker Luca Currado of Vietti is among them, as is the charismatic Ezio Poggio: He’s part of a growing legion of Timorasso evangelists in the Colli Tortonesi region, a mountainous corner of Piedmont near its borders with Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, and Lombardia. Their message, as exemplified by today’s succulent 2018, is forceful: This grape, from this place, makes white wine to be reckoned with. This is Italian white wine with the texture, aromatic complexity, and mineral expression to rival top white Burgundy; Chenin Blanc from the Loire; or Federspiel/Smaragd-level Grüner Veltliner from Austria’s Wachau. If you haven’t ventured outside your white wine comfort zone in a while, this is the day to do it. “Caespes” should not be missed!
Poggio named this wine “Caespes” (Latin for “earth”) as a poetic way to call attention to his relatively unknown terroir, and its relatively obscure native grape. He has been one of the variety/region’s biggest champions since planting his first few acres in 2005, in high-elevation (400 meters+) sites in the Val Borbera. This is the southern end of the “Colli Tortonesi” appellation, which refers to the hills (colli) around Tortona, an ancient town in Piedmont’s Alessandria province. The catchment area of the Colli Tortonesi DOC reaches down to Piedmont’s mountainous border with Liguria, and within it are several officially recognized subzones, of which Terre di Libarna (referenced on the Caespes label) is one.
Tortona was historically known as Derthona, or Dertona, and many Timorasso-based wines carry that archaic name on their labels. Like so many Italian grape varieties, Timorasso effectively grows here and nowhere else; it had been practically extinct until a visionary producer named Walter Massa, whose cantina is about a half-hour north of Poggio’s, resurrected it and began attracting serious critical attention in the early 2000s. Even Francophile British critics like Jancis Robinson appreciated the combination of depth and precision the wines possessed.
Still, for all the critical acclaim and keen interest among producers—Vietti’s Luca Currado released his first Timorasso, from vineyards he acquired in Colli Tortonesi, in 2018—this is still a rare bird. There are just 15 hectares of vineyards registered in the Terre di Libarna DOC, and very few commercially available Timorasso wines in the US. Taste this one, however, and you have to believe that’s going to change.
Our read on the 2018 “Caespes” is that it combines elements of Burgundy Chardonnay and textured Chenin Blanc from appellations like Savennières. It’s a substantial wine on the mid-palate, with a sumptuous texture supported by a taut chord of acidity. In the glass, it’s a bright straw-yellow with hints of green at the rim, with aromas of green apple, citrus, wildflower honey, sea salt, and green almond carrying over to the full-bodied palate. It was aged only in steel tanks but subjected to regular bâtonnage (lees-stirring), which lends a lactic quality to the texture. I tasted this wine with my Francophile colleague Ian Cauble, among others, and he may well have been this wine’s biggest champion: It is a fascinating new sensation for lovers of structured white wines and will be a great partner to whatever fresh fish you can get your hands on. Decant this about 15 minutes before serving in all-purpose white wine stems at 45-50 degrees and pair it with a nice fleshy fillet of halibut, cod, or maybe some lobster. And count yourself among the cognoscenti who turned on to Timorasso before the wider wine world caught on. Enjoy!
