It is a particular privilege to commence a relationship with one of Barbaresco’s oldest and most iconic producers: Cascina Luisin. Nebbiolo from Piedmont’s great terroirs, after all, has been a cornerstone of our portfolio since the very beginning, when Neal began importing the singular Carema from Luigi Ferrando and the lovely traditional Barbaresco from the Anfosso family at DeForville. Cascina Luisin’s wines hail from some of the zone’s greatest vineyard sites…Read More
Carema is northern Piedmont’s “heroic” wine By Robert Camuto Jul 6, 2021 I’ll go anywhere Nebbiolo grows in northern Italy, such is the spell this elite Piedmont native casts. But until this spring, I’d never been to Carema, a tiny village and wine appellation in northwestern Piedmont, about 90 miles north of Nebbiolo’s most famous
The histories of Rosenthal Wine Merchant and the village of Carema have been intertwined since January of 1980, when Neal purchased a small lot of wine from Luigi Ferrando—the very first wine he ever imported. Over the ensuing decades, Ferrando’s Carema has gone from a wine virtually unknown outside of its immediate vicinity to one of the most iconic wines in our portfolio, revered by enthusiasts across the United States and well beyond, and allocated down to the bottle. Read More
The Sesia River originates high in the Italian Alps, just below the Monte Rosa glacier on the border of Switzerland, and flows 140 kilometers southeastward before joining the Po River near Casale Monferrato. Along its path, the Sesia passes neatly through the center of the Alto Piemonte, bisecting its winegrowing communes into western and eastern appellations. One hundred and fifty years ago,
Barolo’s extraordinary geological and topographical complexity is echoed in the staggering variety of its wines—170 crus singing their paeans to Queen Nebbiolo in 170 unique dialects. As with all great winegrowing regions, however, the story of Barolo is the story of two inextricable histories: the glacial, impassive evolution of the earth itself and the feverish tumult of human endeavor which overlays it. As much as it is a story of valleys, ridges, sand, silt, and marl, then, so is Barolo a story of labor, land acquisition, political upheaval, ego, and fashion. Wine is the seam along which those two threads interweave, but—as the modernist missteps of a few years back illustrated—that seam will pucker under too heavy a human hand. Little is required for Barolo’s forceful origin-stamp to roar its pedigree, and we at Rosenthal Wine Merchant have always prized growers in this zone who understand that implicitly and enact it faithfully.
Barolo’s extraordinary geological and topographical complexity is echoed in the staggering variety of its wines—170 crus singing their paeans to Queen Nebbiolo in 170 unique dialects. As with all great winegrowing regions, however, the story of Barolo is the story of two inextricable histories: the glacial, impassive evolution of the earth itself and the feverish tumult of human endeavor which overlays it. As much as it is a story of valleys, ridges, sand, silt, and marl, then, so is Barolo a story of labor, land acquisition, political upheaval, ego, and fashion. Wine is the seam along which those two threads interweave, but—as the modernist missteps of a few years back illustrated—that seam will pucker under too heavy a human hand. Little is required for Barolo’s forceful origin-stamp to roar its pedigree, and we at Rosenthal Wine Merchant have always prized growers in this zone who understand that implicitly and enact it faithfully.
While Barolo’s style pendulum continues to swing away from the excesses of a few decades back, it is a true reward to work with an estate who never succumbed to modern technology’s seductive promises. The Brovia family established themselves as winegrowers in the hamlet of Castiglione Falletto in 1863, amassing over time an enviable collection of vineyards in some of the zone’s greatest crus (Rocche di Castiglione, Villero, and Garblet Sué), as well as a sizable holding in the cru Brea in Serralunga d’Alba.
Drinking this wine tonight. This is the sort of Nebbiolo that I grew up on. Fine, sexy, somewhat pale in color, grainy tannins with bitter cherry flavor, hints of earth on nose and palate, subtle spice and tree bark to boot. Very fine drinking right now with a myriad of dishes … roast chicken, flank steak in its juices are two that come to mind. We had fat portobellos tonight to indulge my vegetarianism which worked perfectly.
NIR
Sitting on the deck on a lovely summer’s eve finishing a bottle of Sizzano 2013 from MONSECCO after polishing off a pizza fresh out of the oven topped with pickings from the garden. What a joy this unpretentious wine is! Aromatically compelling with the classic scents of Nebbiolo … the earthy compost underlies the faded,
The story of the Conti sisters in Boca is a twofold triumph: as ultra-committed winegrowers who are reclaiming and replanting old vineyards in this difficult-to-farm zone, they are part of a larger effort to restore the Alto Piemonte to its pre-phylloxera glory and productivity; and, as visionary, trend-bucking women in a deeply conservative rural area,
It has been deeply satisfying to witness the surge of interest in the Alto Piemonte in recent years. This beautiful, geologically diverse swath of vineyards in the Alpine foothills northeast of Piedmont suffered particularly heavy losses through the ravages of phylloxera and the growth of the local textile industry (which pulled people away from backbreaking
A VITICULTURAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Piedmont, revered for the grandiose wines produced from the Nebbiolo grape, is home as well to an exceptional white variety, ERBALUCE, that is little known and barely appreciated. The Erbaluce finds its home high up in the Canavese district, the lake country in the Alpine foothills north of Torino that
Great vintages are a tango. Nature leads the grower, and the dance is certainly strenuous, but she seems ultimately to want to create something beautiful. Some growing seasons, however, are 15-round boxing matches, with Nature doing her damndest to leave her much smaller opponent utterly crushed. And in 2014 in the Langhe, Mother Nature was
A New Face of Dolcetto Dolcetto is regularly treated as a second-class citizen in the high-dollar, high-prestige district of Barolo, with growers relegating it to unfavorably exposed parts of their holdings and producing it in a quick, straightforward fashion. Barolo is Nebbiolo country, plain and simple, and while one can hardly fault its producers for
A REPORT FROM THE ROVELLOTTI FAMILY IN GHEMME I received a note yesterday from my good friend, Antonello Rovellotti, who was brimming with good cheer because of the healthy state of his vineyards in Baragiola, recognized as the top “cru” in Ghemme. He recounted that back when he was a young boy (and he is
The year 2015 brought an exciting new domaine , NOAH, to our portfolio as we continued to expand our work in the Alto Piemonte. Andrea Mosca and Giovanna Pepe Diaz established NOAH, named after their son, Francesco Noah, in 2010 when, seeking to satisfy a mutual longing to work the land, they purchased 4.7 hectares of vineyards in and around the village of Brusnengo.
Wines: Alto Piemonte, Az. Agr. NOAH, Bramaterra, Brusnengo, Costa della Sesia, Lessona, Nebbiolo, Pepe Diaz, Vigna del Monte
The year 2015 brought an exciting new domaine , NOAH, to our portfolio as we continued to expand our work in the Alto Piemonte. Andrea Mosca and Giovanna Pepe Diaz established NOAH, named after their son, Francesco Noah, in 2010 when, seeking to satisfy a mutual longing to work the land, they purchased 4.7 hectares
Tonight (August 23 2012) we drank a bottle of Barbaresco “Vigneto Loreto” 1997 from De Forville. This estate, with which we have been working for the past 33 years, has always flown a bit under the radar … in a commercial sense. Perhaps this is because the Anfosso family, the owners of De Forville, are
