Description
Gaggiano Viticoltori, Coste Della Sesia Rosso “Leandro”
If you opened this email, I’m going to assume you know what “Alto Piemonte” means. This part of Piedmont is probably the most buzzed-about wine region in Italy other than Sicily’s Mount Etna, and the two regions’ narratives are strikingly similar: Both are historically important terroirs that have been reborn, and in the case of the Alto Piemonte, it has given lovers of the Nebbiolo grape a new range of expressions to obsess over.
Gaggiano Viticoltori is a relatively new arrival on the Alto Piemonte wine scene, which generally has very few new arrivals: Most of the appellations up here have shrunk to almost nothing since their 19th- and early 20th century heydays, so even a well-capitalized “startup” isn’t likely to find much available vineyard land for sale. Marco and Claudio Fabris created Gaggiano as an homage to their grandfather, Gervasio, who, like many grape-growers in this part of Piedmont, abandoned agriculture for factory work during the ’60s and ’70s. Gervasio grew grapes and made a little wine in his home village of Roasio (part of the Bramaterra DOC), but his grandsons have taken things a step further with a commercial enterprise, having managed to acquire vineyards in Gattinara, Lessona, and Bramaterra. Their debut vintage was 2014, and today’s entry-level 2018, “Leandro,” shows them hitting their stride in grand style. As we often say, the true measure of a great wine estate is their least-expensive wine, and, at just $29, this elegant beauty is a harbinger of many great wines to come.
In addition to their father, Sandrine, the Fabris brothers have enlisted the help of young consulting enologist Cristiano Garella, a native son of the Alto Piemonte whose name is attached to a host of acclaimed wine projects in the area. The small Gaggiano winery facility is in Lessona, where Marco Fabris lives, but the estate’s vineyards in that appellation are not yet productive. Fruit for “Leandro,” named for Marco’s grandfather-in-law, comes from their 1.7-hectare “Galizia” vineyard in the Gattinara DOCG. The Leandro bottling carries the “Coste delle Sesia” designation, which, like the “Langhe Nebbiolo” designation in Barolo/Barbaresco, doesn’t include the long minimum aging requirements of Gattinara but hails from the same vineyards. Fruit for the Leandro bottling comes from the volcanic soils of the Galizia vineyard, a high-elevation site that was planted in the early 1970s.
As is typical in Northern Piedmont, this wine is driven by cool-climate Nebbiolo (80%) but includes some of the local grapes Vespolina and Croatina in the blend. The wine was aged for six months in a mix of large Austrian oak casks and neutral 500-liter French oak barrels. We tasted it side-by-side with Gaggiano’s more-expensive, longer-aged Gattinara bottling, and it hardly suffered by comparison: It has the signature mix of rusticity and refinement that characterizes the best Alto Piemonte reds, with less of a tannin/alcohol whallop in comparison to most Barolo/Barbaresco.
In the glass, the 2018 is a deep garnet red moving to a pink rim (the Croatina adds some fortifying color and some black-fruited bass notes), with heady and complex aromas of juicy black and red raspberry, tiny wild strawberries, black tea, blood orange peel, rose petals, and darker notes of turned earth and pulverized rocks. It has a very focused, firm structure, and excellent balance, improving measurably after about 30 minutes in a decanter. Serve it in Burgundy stems at 60 degrees both now and over the next 3-5 years (not that you’re likely to cellar a $29, but it’s nice to know that you could). I flipped for this wine when I first tasted it and won the battle over who got to take it home, and return visits to the bottle over the course of an evening only deepened my appreciation: this is a lot of true Nebbiolo character for this price, so treat it to a classic food pairing like braised beef or risotto with wild mushrooms. You are sure to be mightily impressed with the results. Enjoy!
