Description
Antonello Rovellotti, “Costa del Salmino” Ghemme Riserva DOCG
I couldn’t be more excited to showcase today’s special wine. Over our five years in business, this is only the second time we’ve had a viable opportunity to offer Rovellotti’s flagship bottling. The reasoning couldn’t be simpler: Shrewd patience on the winemaker’s part and limited quantities that seem to arrive in America by the bottle (production ranges from 0-300 cases). In the select years Rovellotti actually bottles their “Costa del Salmino,” it proudly bears three of wine’s greatest qualities: (1) A soulful, meditative experience; (2) a drinking window that extends for decades; and (3) the distinctive ability to become an instant conversation piece at the table.
Name your price, producer, and region, and Rovellotti’s Ghemme Riserva will confidently lock horns with any Nebbiolo challenger—the dark fruits, earthen savor, heady perfume, and northern Piedmontese finesse are all there. But I can’t talk any further about how beautifully this is drinking right now before explaining why that is: Having lived here for hundreds of years, the Rovellotti family is steeped in tradition. Their vines are farmed organically, fermentations occur naturally, and the rare “Costa del Salmino” ages in large barrels and bottle for a total of six years before release. The level of patience here is simply astounding. While a dazzling red wine showpiece now, I urge you not underestimate this gem’s extraordinary cellar appeal—it will defy Father Time, and do it with effortless style. Up to six bottles per person until our stock disappears!
Ghemme belongs to the greater “Alto Piemonte,” the more northerly part of Italy’s Piedmont region, about an hour north-east of Barolo. Clustered around the Sesia River north of the city of Novara, the assorted wine appellations of the Alto Piemonte are prime hunting ground for extreme Nebbiolo values, and Ghemme has proved especially fertile. But there just isn’t much to be had: The geographic boundaries of the appellation are already quite small, but the number of planted acres here is shockingly low (there’s a reason this wine is so hard to obtain!) Further, like Barolo and Barbaresco, Ghemme is classified as a DOCG—the “G” standing for garantita, or guaranteed—which is the highest “quality indicator” in the Italian appellation system.
Antonello Rovellotti lives in the small village of Ghemme, which is centered around a sprawling castle built in the 1100s; Antonello is the only winemaker still permitted to work in the original structure. His “winery” is little more than a collection of trap doors, lofts, and crawl spaces hidden all over the castle. Despite the minuscule production volume here, it takes numerous key rings and an hour of exploring and climbing ladders to see the entire operation. And while Antonello is a gifted and experienced winemaker, and his vines are among the village’s oldest and most prized, for me the real story with Rovellotti is his vinification.
He is not afraid of making wine the hard (and long) way. His grapes are macerated on their skins and left on lees for a mind-boggling amount of time: After maturing for dozens of months in neutral, lightly toasted Suppiger barrels (a Swiss cooperage sourcing oak from the Jura Mountains), along with heaps of additional time in bottle, nearly six years have passed! Most modern wine producers—even in top-dollar regions like Burgundy or Barolo—aren’t willing to defer profits for that long. Rovellotti is crafting Piedmontese Nebbiolo much like it was in the 1960s.
Rovellotti’s flagship “Costa del Salmino” pours a deep, dark ruby with slight hints of brick orange highlighting the rim, one of Nebbiolo’s calling cards. That’s just one indicator, though, and as with every ultra-traditional wine, you’ll find supremely classic Nebbiolo notes ringing true from sight to nose to palate. After two hours in a decanter, it began revealing the powerful yet elegant notes that I crave in top Piemontese wine, but to be completely honest, it was at its best long after it had been opened. It was stunning 10 hours later at my house, and showed unmistakable pedigree and sublime complexity the following day. It emits soulful notes of dried red plums, sour cherries, macerated black raspberries, redcurrant, leather, crushed rose petal, black truffle, dried herbs, and turned earth—it doesn’t get more perfectly integrated than this. Powerful, immensely structured, and hauntingly savory, these treasures are genuine expressions of Ghemme’s ancient glacial/red clay soils, which translates into a terroir-heavy, powerfully aromatic wine that tells a long, detailed story with each sip. Serve around 60-65 degrees in large Burgundy stems and remember: save a few for the long haul—we owe it to the staunchly traditional Rovellotti family. Cheers!
