There have been some great Barolo/Barbaresco discussions recently, lets get some chatter going on these regions as well. What are some of the top producers, both today and going back to the 70’s and 80’s? Are vintages similar with Barolo/Barbaresco or do warmer vintages do better with the increase in altitude? What are some differences in production? Did many producers move to barrique in the 80’s and 90’s?
Some really interesting things are going on in/around Lessona.
http://www.proprietasperino.it/en/history.html
http://eng.tenutesella.it/our_wines.html
Warmer vintages tend to be a bit better, but storms can be a problem. Most of the producers I encountered have continued to work in a traditional style. And may God Bless Them for it. Well OK, Sperino uses a little barrique.
I sell a lot of this Alto Piemonte category. And I personally really enjoy the wines. Here is a blog post I made recently with some of my favorites. My first experience with a friend in Milan and an early 90’s Ferrando Carema (almost 18 years ago) lit the fire.
I think northern Piedmont is going to be very well known in a few years. The soils are different from the Langhe, and very varied; the climate is cooler; and there is a tradition of blending with other local varieties (for example Vespolina and Croatina) in some appellations. If you are a Nebbiolo-lover, and I know there are many of us on this board, there are some wonderful opportunities in Alto Piemonte.
Shill alert: I import Alto Piemonte wines from Sella (Lessona and Bramaterra), Cantalupo (Ghemme), and several other producers.
Dessilani is another producer to check out. Dante Scaglione was going to do some consulting for them a few years ago. But I was never able to follow up on his results.
We’ve been rocking Cà Nova (in Ghemme) and Cà dè Santi (Fara, Sizzano, Ghemme and Gattinara) for quite a while. Nice whites made with Erbaluce and a lovely Vespolina in purezza as well.
For me, the wines of Antonio Vallana represent the best Nebbiolo values in the market. I bought multiple cases of the Gattinara 2000 and 2004 as well as the 2008 and 2010 Spanna Colline Novaresi and 2010 Spanna Cuvee Bernardo.
Ohhhh…the horrors of it all, Daniel. Don’t you know that many of those Nebbiolos are blended w/ Croatina/Vespolina???
And everybody knows that Nebbiolo, like Pinot, should never be blended w/ other varieties. Why…it’ll
be the downfall of WesternCivilization as we know it!!! ![[stirthepothal.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f40faec63ca1018898a40805efbf9f0066a3d205.gif "[stirthepothal.gif]"){kind=small}
The AltoPiemonte, along w/ the Valtelline, is where my favorite renditions of Nebbiolo originate…outside of Calif, of course.
Tom
Conti Boca is one of my all time favorites. I know others rave over Vallana, but I think the small price difference is worth it for Conti.
Massimo Clerico is doing some fun stuff. I haven’t had enough, but so far, I can’t find a bad wine.
Cantalupo is great if you’ve never had Ghemme before.
Pettarino is making some great Gattinara.
Ferrando doesn’t need my help. I get less wine every year 
Lessona seems to be quite consistent from a producer stand point. Wish I could say the same about the vintages…
Drinking the last sips of a Campo delle Piane Boca 1984 of Antonio Cerri I opened yesterday and drunk with friends.
I liked it yesterday and am loving these last sips. It was stinky as we first poured it in the glass yesterday, but it cleaned up quickly. Tense, lean, lively and still with grippy but very fine tannins.
And still with red fruit, but in that thin expression thereof which brings to mind cranberries.
I’ll second Ian’s remarks regarding Massimo Clerico. I had the 05 and 06 Lessona and both were great. I am looking forward to trying the 07 soon.
Any comments on Carema vintages 2006 vs. 2007 vs. 2008?
For Barolo, I preferred 06 and 08 to 07, but maybe up in the Alto Piedmonte, it’s different?
Oliver, I have gone pretty much as far as I need to go in collecting Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera, Brunello and Chianti, as well as all non-Italian wines, save maybe needing some German Rieslings for current drinking. However, a hole worth trying to fill is the one being addressed on this thread. I may be able to have some luck picking up old vintages locally. Can you point me to a reliable vintage chart, or rattle off some of the great post-1950 vintages? (That assumes that the northern wines do not follow the same vintage pattern as the Barolo and Barbaresco zones, although there would have to be a good deal of overlap, I would think.)
Follow-up: I did some research in Sheldon Wasserman’s tome, which, while a bit dated now (it stops at 1989), seems to confirm that the great Langhe vintages are likely to be great Alte Piemonte vintages, with some surprises. 52, 64, 74, 78, 82, 85, 88 and 89 were all concensus greats, with 74 and 85 perhaps being standouts in the north even more than in the Langhe. 71 was apparently NOT a strong vintage in the north (except perhaps for some Caremas), and very good wines were apparently made in 50, 56, 59, 61, 62, 67, 69, 70, 79, 86 and 87 as well. I would be interested in hearing from anybody with some vintage-specific experience, as the impression you get is that there are more noteworthy vintages further north than there were in the Langhe…
07 is the most accessible of the 3 for sure.
Recent vintages tend to line up in terms of style with the farther south areas.
I’ve had as far back as 56 (a Vallana Spana), and it was fresh as a daisy. 87 is a fun vintage since Barolo and Barbaresco aren’t great, and these wines can really impress. The 87 Conti Boca was re-released this year, and is worth seeking out. Great blind tasting bottle.
My uncle used to order Vallana Spanna and Cantine del Castello di Conti Boca as “table setters” for big Italian dinners out in Manhattan. Then after everyone had a glass he’d leave those bottles mid-table and order Barolo or Brunello, which never really left his end of the dinner table!
You can drink the 07, then move to 08 and finish up with 06. For the most part these wine need time. They must have a few years, and will reward a few more. The 04 Sperino Lessona is just turning the corner.
The Sperino wines drink well young, and current is the 2008 (had it last week actually)
Bill,
My feeling is that Alto Piemonte is like many exciting developing appellations, Etna for example, in having relatively few estate-bottlers until recently; and also in having relatively few well-made wines until recently. So very well-made older wines are hard to come by. The good news is that some of these wines drink very well from release, and show very attractive tertiary development after only ten years or so. This is particularly true of Lessona, whose wines are very elegant even on release, and often lower in alcohol than Langhe Nebbiolo from a comparable vintage (the '08 Lessona from Sella is 13%abv, for example; as stated above, I import Sella for my market). I have had Sella wines from the '20s and the '70s, the former was a curiosity but the later ('76, iirc) was very good, so they obviously age well.
There are one or two producers who have a surprising amount of older wine available now, I’m not sure how they manage it and I haven’t had the wines. The economics of growing, making and selling big reds is pretty dodgy to start with.
There is much more variation in soil within the appellations in Alto Piemonte than there is in the Langhe, so you’ll find much more variation in structure than you do in the Langhe.
For me, discovering these wines was like finding your favorite writer had written 4 or 5 more books that you didn’t know about, a very happy surprise for this Nebbiolo lover.
I should probably toot Oliver’s horn a bit as he was one of the first suppliers to turn me onto Lessona with the wonderful Sella wines he imports. I have enjoyed those bottlings and their Bramaterra over the years. And they make an excellent Erbaluce as well.
Another good analogy for this region would be with music: i.e., listening and liking to the last few Queens of the Stone Age albums for several years and then going back to discover their first album later. Maybe. Right? (just happened to me).