Over the last few months, I’ve made a few impassioned pleas on behalf of some indigenous Italian white wines that deserve a brighter spotlight. Today I have another one, but it’s such a slam-dunk I don’t need to do much pleading. Ask me to name my 10 favorite Italian whites of all time and Riccardo Bruna’s “Le Russeghine” would be on it—right up near the top, too.
Not only is it a benchmark wine in its region, it so thoroughly and thrillingly evokes that region I’m hard-pressed to think of a more vivid illustration of the concept of terroir. Terroir is not just soil but the “total natural environment” of a vineyard, which in this case is the sliver of land in northwest Italy called Liguria. Its northern border is a string of Alps that separate it from Piedmont; its southern border is the Mediterranean Sea. In between is lots of dense, hilly woodland spilling down to a narrow strip of beach. This wine takes you right there: It’s made in the woods but tastes just as strongly of the beach, and with the “official” start of Summer a few weeks away, I can’t think of a more appropriate wine to enjoy RIGHT NOW. Pigato is the grape, Liguria is the place, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be—who’s with me?
Pigato is effectively a mutation, or a “biotype,” of Vermentino, which thrives throughout the Mediterranean basin. This wine’s “Riviera Ligure di Ponente” appellation (DOC) refers to the western part of Liguria reaching to Italy’s border with France. As the name suggests, this is the Italian Riviera, traversed by the ancient Roman road known as the Via Aurelia, which hugs the coast all the way from Rome to Arles, at the mouth of France’s Rhône River. Along this stretch of coast are beach towns like Loano and San Remo, where, once upon a time, Keith Richards and an entourage sojourned after a night of recording tracks for Exile on Main Street in a villa just down the coast in France. “We would record from late in the afternoon until 5 or 6 in the morning, and suddenly the dawn comes up and I’ve got this boat,” Richards wrote in his autobiography, Life. “Go down the steps through the cave to the dockside; let’s take Mandrax to Italy for breakfast…No passport, right past Monte Carlo as the sun’s coming up with music ringing in our ears.”
Riccardo Bruna is a pioneering grower of Pigato in the hillside town of Ranzo. He acquired his “Le Russeghine” vineyard in the early 1970s, and today the site continues to hold some 50+-year-old vines in soils of iron-rich red clay and limestone. Surrounded by woods and supported by terraces, this site would surely be considered a “Grand Cru” if such a thing existed in Liguria, and these days, thanks to an injection of new blood in the form of Riccardo’s daughter, Francesca, and husband, Roberto, the site is farmed according to organic practices. The Le Russeghine bottling is one of three single-vineyard Pigatos they make and usually the most powerful and expressive of the lot: it is fermented on native yeasts in stainless steel and aged for several months on its fine lees (spent yeast cells) in a combination of steel tanks and large, wooden foudre barrels.
Before sharing my tasting impressions I’ll let Francesca Bruna set the scene: “The microclimate is Mediterranean, dry and windy, with the sea and its endless horizon on one side and the Ligurian Alps, greenery, light and silence on the other,” she writes. “The vineyards grow in harmony with olive trees, oaks, holm-oaks and Mediterranean scrub.” That should give you a good sense of what to expect—the wine is a pale yellow-gold in the glass with greenish tints, with evocative scents of lemon/lime, green apple, yellow peach, pine nuts, wild herbs, and sea spray. It is medium to medium-plus in body, with some texture to the mid-palate followed by a cleansing blast of acidity. There’s no reason not to drink it now and throughout the Summer, but it will continue to delight over the next few years if you choose to stock up. Serve it at 45-50 degrees in all-purpose white wine stems with a whole-roasted branzino or a homemade
fritto misto drizzled with lots of lemon. White wine heaven! Enjoy!
