My name is Keith Beavers, it's spooky season, and to anyone making a slasher film, I have still not fulfilled my bucket list wish of being a victim in a slasher film, so if so, please DM me!
What's going on, wine lovers from the Vinepair Podcast Network?This is the Wine 101 Podcast.My name is Keith Beavers, and I am the Tastings Director of Vinepair.
We're gonna talk about Nebbiolo one more time, because it's just, there's more than just Barolo and Barbaresco, although those wines are amazing, let's get into it.
Okay, so last episode we talked about Alto Piemonte with the nebula grape being called Spanna from these two areas on each side of the river.Gattinarra, Gemme, all that.
And so when we talk about Nebbiolo, just in Piedmont alone, when we're talking about the Southern part, which is the Lange Hills, this is where Barolo and Barbaresco are. Those wines are powerful.
You know, Nebbiolo creates, even when Barbaresco was considered a little bit lighter than Barolo, still these wines are powerful wines, full of fruit and aromatics.
They have acidity like going for days, but they have all this, this, this power behind them.As we go north, the Nebbiolo grape continues to thrive.But as we saw, as we saw in the last episode,
We're getting further into the Alps, therefore the climate's thinning, if you will, or just changing, and the nebulogrape, now called spawna,
It creates beautiful big wines, but with very high acid, which makes your palate perceive a little bit of lightness to it.
So they still have tannin, not as much as you would get down South, but they are age-worthy and have acidity and they have power, but they just present themselves a little bit differently.Now, if we head Northwest from that area, we enter
A DOCG by the name of CAREMA.C-A-R-E-M-A.This is also a very small wine region making up a little over 40 acres.
It's tucked into the mountainous terrain, just the northern ish border of Piedmont and is in Piedmont, the northern most zone that Nebbiolo can actually thrive and be cultivated.
The vineyards in this area, because of the mountainous region that it's in are on terraced vineyards that climb between around 1200 to 2300 feet above sea level.So,
What we have here is Nebbiolo being, or I should say showing itself in even more Northern climates.And we're just following the sort of the body of the wine starts to reduce a little bit.The acidity becomes more prominent as we get North.
But no matter what, this is Nebbiolo.It will always express itself with some sort of power.And here, the acidity is perceived even more with less body, but because the majority of the wines here are 100% Nebbiolo, they're still very age-worthy.
This is a place that was kind of brought back to life by one particular winemaker, Luigi Ferrando.
He did a 100% Nebbiolo that kind of blew people's minds and kind of brought this place into the social drinking consciousness of the Piemontese and eventually us in the United States.
But this is another example of get your Indiana Jones hat on because they're not easy to find, but it's fun looking for them.It's fun acquiring them, and they're delicious.And it's Nebula.
If you love Nebula like I do, you can try it in all these different forms.I personally find it fascinating.
You can get a Nebbiolo from Barolo, from Lange, from Barolo, you can get a Nebbiolo from Barbaresco, you can get a Nebbiolo from Gemme, Gattinara, and Carema.You can try them all together and just really see how amazing this variety is.
But the thing about Nebbiolo is it doesn't just thrive in Piemonte.It also does really well in a very unlikely place in Lombardia in the far Northern Alpine zone of the region.
And this wine lovers is actually the Northern most zone in Italy, not just a region, but in Italy, the whole country. where Nebbiolo can be cultivated.And here they don't call it Nebbiolo, they call it Chiavanasca.
And if you've never heard of Valtellina, you are in for one hell of a treat.
Where with Piedmont, you go from the Barolo, the Lange Hills, Barolo, Barresco and all that, you start moving north, like we just talked about, and you can, there's different styles of Nebbiolo as you go up.
In Lombardia, in the Valtellina region, the river Adda starts in Switzerland, works its way through Lombardia, and it cuts its way east to west until eventually turning south and dumping into Lake Cuomo.
Oh, one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.So you have this very unique wine region that follows the river east to west. in this very, very mountainous region.
And as the river flows towards Lake Cuomo through the region, there are different pockets that have Nebbiolo and those pockets express Nebbiolo in different ways.So they've all gotten their own DOCGs.
It's a little bit confusing of how they do their wine here.So I want to explain it to you because it's a lot of fun to explore these wines.And oddly enough, if you've never heard of Valtellina,
They are popular on the American market and are not hard to find.I mean, some of them are a little bit hard, but it's getting easier.And if you do a little bit, if you really look, you can find them.
So let's talk about the Nebbiolo grape and how it expresses itself in the most Northern region of Italy, it can actually grow.One thing about the entire region is that it has a very unique climate.
It gets a very healthy amount of sun hours due to its elevation, which creates a lot of radiation, which actually helps, you know, photosynthesis and ripening of the varieties.
But because of the soil compositions there, it's very rocky, sometimes craggy, and those rocks really soak up that radiation during the day and at night regulate the temperatures of the vines.
The region is also pretty protected by the mountains and has a very even what they call an even spread of rain throughout the year.So it's kind of like a Goldilocks situation for vines, poor soil, great sun, and not too little and not too much rain.
The entire region of Valtellina is a little over 2000 acres of land under vine. and the entire area has a generalized DOC called Rosso di Valtellina DOCG covering everything.But within that larger DOC are these pockets I was talking about.
So the level up from the DOC is DOCG Valtellina Superiore.
And within the superiore DOCG rules, this is where we get to the aging stuff, like 24 months before release with 12 months in barrel or 36 months for riserva, showing that these wines can age.
And in the superior or superiore sections of this region going west to east, within those pockets of superiore are five very specifically named DOCGs within superiore.I know it's confusing.Let me explain.
So looking at a map of the Valtellina region, you're looking at a river going west to east and clinging to that river in the hills are these wine regions.And from east to west, there are five pockets.
Those five pockets are considered Valtellina Superiore DOCG. Now, within those five pockets are these other specific terroir-driven DOCGs, also called superiore, that have specific names and specific styles.
Going from east to west, we first come upon Valtellina Superiore Valgella DOCG. Now, I'm not sure about the elevation here, but what's really unique is it, the legend goes that Val Jela is an old dialect name for Val Jel, which means small creeks.
And the idea is all these small creeks in this area vary the microclimates. in the area, making it very good for vines.And the general theme of wines made from Nebbiolo here is fresh, fruity, high acid, all while still being Nebbiolo.Or Kievanoska.
As we head west we come upon the Valley DOCG Inferno.Yeah.Inferno.Hot.Warm.So this is the Valtellina Superiore Inferno DOCG.
It's a little intense, the name, because it's named after the valley, which is warmer than everywhere else in the Val d'Elena region.So I don't know if it's tongue in cheek or something, but it's also very craggy.
So maybe it has a bunch of outcroppings of rock.So maybe it kind of like had a Dante feel.I don't know. I don't know.Whether tongue and cheek or not, the valley is warmer than most of the areas around it.
Therefore, the wines that come out of this Inferno DOCG tend to be a little bit earthier, a little more powerful, a little more depth while still having the natural acidity the Nebbiolo has, but bringing more of that style that you would recognize from Spagna or maybe even like Barbaresco.
Then we come upon a major city, Sondrio, and just north in the hills around Sondrio is the Valtellina Superiore Grumello DOCG. And these wines almost, I don't know, the Oxford Wine Companion said they were precious.So I kind of agree.
They have a bit of a softness to them.They are still powerful wines.They have a little more viscosity to them, but they are stylistically individual from the other DOCGs around them.
You'll have to try them for yourself to kind of get a good sense of them, but they have some depth and some power, but there's a softness to them. Heading west, we come upon Sacella.
Sacella is the second largest region in this whole area, the biggest being the first one, Valgella, over 330 or something acres under vine, where Sacella has over 280.Everyone else is a little bit lower, 192 for Grumello, Inferno is only 135.
But this happens to be the most, I don't know, it's not the most celebrated, but it has the most kind of European vibe.
all of them because of this area it's very craggy again a lot of outcroppings is a very it's a very poor soil here and The wines tend to be very elegant mineral driven, but still again powerful nebbiolo and I think because of that they're the most popular or they were the ones that kind of gate started being more popular on the American market and then everyone else sort of followed suit and
And then we have the last one all the way towards the end of this sort of river flow called Valtellina Superiore Maroggia, D-O-C-G.Sort of a newer one.I don't know if I've actually had, I've had almost, I've had all of these.
I don't know that I've had one from here. the whole vibe here is there's only 61 acres under vine and there's a lot of new plantings going on.And it is said that because of the new plantings, these are younger vines.
So the wines are a little bit delicate.They're not, I mean they're age worthy just like everything else.
But I think it's still trying to, it's, it's actually in this, I feel like this particular DOCG is kind of defining self as we speak in real time while as we're talking. So there you go.You have the Valtellina wine region.
A big old DOC, Rosso di Valtellina, covering the entire area with an elevated DOCG called Superiore.And then within the Superiore, you have the five zones with specific names with their own style.Vergela, Inferno, Grumello, Sacella, and Maroggia.
That's a hard one to do.Now, this is so fun, and this is so cool, and we can try all these different kinds of Nebbiolos, but there's one more wine being made in this area that might just blow your mind. Well, I'm a wine nerd, so it blows my mind.
It blows your mind.Have you guys ever heard of Amarone?
The big, full-bodied red wine made in the Valpolicella region out of the Corvina grape, Rondinella Molinara grape that they dry into almost like raisins, and they make wine from that, and it's highly alcoholic and big.Well, they also do that here.
But here, they call it Sforzato, or in the dialect, Sforzat.So it's an Amarone style, wine made from Nebbiolo, and it is out of this world.
I've had a few of them, and they're just bizarre because it has the beautiful power, the beautiful acidity of Nebbiolo, but then that amazingness is concentrated into this beautiful... Sforzato means strength, strong, and that's what these wines are.
But because they're from Nebbiolo, There's a balance.You just, it's unique in itself.It's unique to Amarone.It's beautiful.And the cool thing is these wines are available on the American market.
Sforzato is around, Sforzato, because the thing is this area used to be big in negotiants.Negotiants used to run the game in this area.And that's how a lot of the wines made it to the United States through the negotiant contracts.
Today, a lot of these new negotiations have become winemakers themselves.And that's kind of how this region is improving itself every year.
So this is a fun, exciting, new for some of you wine region to explore that is available on the American market made from the Nebbiolo grape, Chiavanosca if you're nasty, and has all these cool subtleties to explore.
And even the best part about this is they're not really expensive. They're not.They're kind of like the same pricing that goes with Gattinara and Gemme.They're like $40, $50, $60, $70.
I mean, they can get expensive, but you can explore this region and not break the bank.It's awesome.And it's Nebbiolo.The grape that made Barolo and Barbaresco famous is here in Lombardia.It's amazing.Okay, guys, let's talk next week.
VinePearKeith is my Insta.Rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts from.It really helps get the word out there.And now for some totally awesome credits.
Wine 101 was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePear headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big old shout out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Mallon for creating Vinepair.
And I mean, big shout out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of Vinepair for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast.Also Darby Seaside for the theme song.Listen to this.
And I want to thank the entire Vinepair staff for helping me learn something new every day.See you next week.
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