Is Piedmont Really Alpine?
How the northerly subregion of Alto Piemonte may hold the secrets to Piedmont’s Alpine past - and future.
(P.S. this is a long one and you might need to open your email in a new tab or read on the Substack app)
There’s a story I’ve told many times before, from back when Julia and I first started the Alpine Wine Society. I would share our focus on wines from the Alpine region with industry bigwigs - the top sommeliers, the fine and rare dealers - and I would initially be met with blank stares. “Okay,” they would eventually say, “so, Piedmont.”
“Well yes,” I would reply, “but not just Piedmont.” For our ambitions stretched across six countries, from southeastern France to northwestern Slovenia, and encompassed all of the weird and wonderful wines contained within.
But certainly, in our back pocket were the flashy nebbiolos of Barolo and Barbaresco: a gateway for wine drinkers to our more obscure bottles of interest, and a means of assuring the old guard that we were in fact serious wine people. It was simply a great fortune to us that one of the five most prestigious wine regions in the world happened to be Piemonte - “the foot of the mountains.”
Yet a lot has happened since the early days of Alpine Wine. We’ve spent countless hours scouring wine store websites for Swiss heidas, Alto Adige Müller-Thurgaus and the one bottle of Ernst Triebaumer blaufränkisch to be found at a shop in West Harlem. I had the chance to chat with Savoyard winemaker Denis Berthollier about efforts to save indigenous French Alpine grapes from extinction. Julia got a taste of how unrelenting mountain wine country can be when she hiked the vertical slopes of Valle d’Aosta with a case of RSV. As we’ve developed our own understanding of what Alpine wine is, we’ve gravitated towards wines that are more accessible price-wise compared to much of Piedmont, but bear a more rugged and niche sensibility; rarer than Barolo, if not quite as rarefied.
Our Piedmontese journey this season took us away from Barolo, however, and closer to the mountains, to the subregion of Alto Piemonte, or Northern Piedmont. Here, nebbiolo is known to be fresher and subtler, thanks to cooler temperatures and volcanic soils. The denominations of Gattinara and Ghemme are ascendant on the international wine scene, but far from dominant. It seemed to us that if nebbiolo were to feature in Alpine Wine, this is where it would live.
As I looked to understand what Alto Piemonte would mean to us, I became interested in what Alto Piemonte meant to Piedmont at large, and how the distinction could be a way of thinking about identity and quality of wine in general. The question then became less about whether or not Alto Piemonte is Alpine, and more about whether it could be.
Long before the days of Conterno and Giacosa, Northern Piedmont was the nexus of Italian wine. Viticulture in some areas pre-dated even the Romans, and continued to develop over the centuries so that the wines gained international renown; Thomas Jefferson was such a fan of the wine of Gattinara that he supposedly had two barrels of it brought over to the White House on a warship.
And then along came Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, icon of the Italian Risorgimento. I first encountered Cavour in my twelfth grade European history class, and somewhere in the margins of my notebook I jotted down the words “Machiavellian politician.” Little did I know that the same man who had skillfully attained the role of first Prime Minister of Italy had also managed to transform some nondescript hillsides into a fine wine powerhouse - I mean Barolo, of course.
But the impetus for Barolo came from Burgundy. Cavour adored the wines of Burgundy, specifically Clos Vougeot and Romanée, so much so that he hoped to create an equivalent wine in his native Piedmont. In 1845, he wrote a famous letter asserting that the nebbiolo-based wine of Sizzano in Alto Piemonte was the only wine in Italy capable of producing a “bouquet” like Burgundy. He had nebbiolo vines brought down from Alto Piemonte to Barolo in order to develop what he believed would become an even better wine further south, with the help of some imported Burgundian winemaking techniques.
It’s easy to see the broad acceptance of Burgundy in what has since become a proudly Italian tradition of winemaking: focus on wine from a single varietal (pinot noir in Burgundy, nebbiolo in Barolo), and the subdivision of land based on soil types, sometimes down to the vineyard, in order to produce wines that best express a particular place. But in the 1970s, Barolo and its fraternal twin appellation Barbaresco met a more controversial foreign influence: barrique.
A barrique is a type of barrel used to age wine, smaller in size so more wine is in contact with the wood, and often made of toasted oak in order to introduce additional flavors into the wine. This in itself may sound innocuous enough, but it’s the effect barriques encourage on the outcome of wine - bigger, oakier and more supple - that raises objections among wine traditionalists. Actually, I think the objection has even more to do with where barrique aging is practiced, as a technique that originated in Bordeaux but was honed on a large-scale in California. The connotation is one of wines that reach for showy impressiveness without nuance, which basically sums up the stereotype of the American wine consumer in the second half of the twentieth century.
In Barolo, a group of producers caught the barrique bug abroad - Angelo Gaja, from California in the 1970s, and Elio Altare, oddly enough, from Burgundy, by way of some winemakers who were finding success on the “international” aka US-centric market. Their resulting wines created a schism in Piedmont, with winemakers and critics frantically sorting themselves into either the “modernist” or “traditionalist” camps. Italian wine expert / Marcella’s handful husband Vincent Hazan went so far as to call Altare “a terrorist.” Writing more diplomatically of Gaja in his book Italian Wine, Hazan observed:
“[Gaja’s Barbarescos] are wines made with intense care and with the single-minded objective of making them as big and full and ripe as possible…I cannot bring myself to admire them wholeheartedly.”
The irony of course was that the traditionalist critics who were, I believe, rightfully lamenting the “international” influence in Piedmont were defending Italian authenticity in a style that very much had Burgundy in its DNA. And so in Piedmont we find the opposition of California bad, Burgundy good, in a world where “Burgundian” is the very best thing a wine can be - short of actually coming from Burgundy itself.
But what of Alto Piemonte in this whole drama? By the time Angelo Gaja was pumping out his new and improved Barbarescos, the sub-Alpine stretch that had once been the single most important wine-producing region in Italy now sat on the sidelines. The local viticulture had been hit particularly hard by the phylloxera outbreak of the early twentieth century, and the proliferation of textile factories in the area coaxed many in the winemaking community towards a more convenient and stable way of life. Alto Piemonte’s wine production all but collapsed in the 1950s, and what once comprised 40,000 hectares of vineyards was reduced to nearly zero.
Yet in recent decades, intrepid winemakers have propelled a renaissance in Alto Piemonte. In 1999, a consortium of Alto Piemonte producers was formed, and now includes 10 appellations - Gattinara, Ghemme, Boca, Lessona, Sizzano, Bramaterra, Fara, Coste della Sesia, Colline Novaresi, and Valli Ossolane. Nebbiolo remains the most famous local grape, and some estates have transcended their regional presence to achieve greater international recognition, such as Travaglini, Antoniolo and Nervi (now known as Nervi-Conterno).
Given how much the emphasis had shifted towards Barolo and Barbaresco in the past 200 years, I wondered if it was possible to understand these rejuvenated Alto Piemonte nebbiolos as a purer expression of Italian wine, untouched by Burgundy, untainted by California - beholden less to global wine whims than to their immutable guardians of the Alpine range.
But I could also see how the cooler Piedmontese subregion could become a target for investment in light of climate change, that little phenomenon the IEP estimates will displace 1.2 billion people by 2050, and that will also make a lot of wine taste bad. I knew that in 2018, Roberto Conterno of Barolo’s famed Conterno estate purchased Nervi in Gattinara, a move my Burgundian mind likened to Guillaume d’Angerville setting up Domaine du Pélican in Jura. Would Alto Piemonte hold fast to its Alpine roots, or was Barolo moving north?
To better understand the Alpine qualities of Alto Piemonte, there seemed no one better to speak to than a Swiss native: Christoph Kunzli, head of the Le Piane estate in the appellation of Boca.
Thirty-five years ago, Kunzli was working as an Italian wine buyer for Switzerland when he had the chance to taste some historic vintages of the wines of Boca, and, in his words, was so moved that he decided to try making wine in Boca himself, which was then reduced to a mere 10 hectares of vineyards. And while Hazan derided Switzerland in Italian Wine as “a thirsty and uncritical market,” I should hope he’s sufficiently pleased that one of their countrymen is restoring Boca to its former glory, with 40 hectares now in production. The people of Boca certainly are - they acknowledged Kunzli with an honored resident award earlier this year.
Kunzli was adamant that Alto Piemonte at large is not hoping to emulate Barolo and Barbaresco, and instead leaning into its own terroir and cooler-climate traits. "We are not copying Barolo, because we have much more to give here. The wines are more savory - we are on volcanic soils, so more mineral. We don't need the power of alcohol to make good wines."
Lower alcohol is of course one of our favorite virtues of Alpine wines, as it makes it easier to appreciate the delicacy of a wine’s flavors without the alcoholic burn. Still, I was curious if Alto Piemonte considered itself as Alpine as we wanted to believe it was. It is not Valtellina, another northerly wine region up in the mountains of Lombardy, which nevertheless gets lumped in with Alto Piemonte when discussing lighter nebbiolos. Meanwhile the appellation of Carema is administratively part of Piedmont, but when looking at Carema on a regional map, I personally find its inclusion about as convincing as a US Congressional district. (In his book Italy’s Noble Red Wines, Sheldon Wasserman notably covered Carema in his section on Aosta and Turino, not Piedmont). Don’t get me wrong - we adore the wines of Carema, and will enthusiastically promote them as Alpine wines, but I do question whether they should really be considered part of Piedmont.
Kunzli was contemplative. “[Carema is] Piedmont - yes and no. In a way, yes, it's Piedmont, because it's Piemonte. But three kilometers after, it's Valle d'Aosta. And the climate and the mountain-like exposure, it's much more like Valle d'Aosta. It has nothing to do with our wines, Northern Piedmont wines.
“Of course,” he continued, “our wines are Alpine wines, but…it's not so much cooler than Barolo, but more ventilated, a night-to-day difference in temperature which makes the aromatics very interesting, and that's the Alpine effect. But Carema and Valtellina are really Alpine wines.”
I asked him about Roberto Conterno's purchasing of the Nervi estate in Gattinara. "I think he was very clever to do this," said Kunzli. “Roberto Conterno was the first and the only at the moment who saw the potential in the North, and not in the South, of Italy.” Yet as Kunzli explained from his own experience, setting up in a largely neglected wine region is tough, as many of the former vineyards have been overtaken by dense forest. And once workable vineyards are in place, it takes ten years after planting to get the first wine, hardly an appealing return on investment for true profit-seekers. Conterno, on the other hand, was able to reap the benefits of an active, famous estate in the region, a situation Kunzli described as “very exceptional.” So despite the attention that Conterno has driven towards Gattinara, and the more consistent ripening the local grapes are experiencing under climate change, it's unlikely that other Barolistas will be making inroads into Alto Piemonte en masse.
So if it doesn’t become an extension of southern Piedmont, how can Alto Piemonte crystallize its distinct Alpine identity? For one, the wines can retain the cooler aesthetic Kunzli passionately described, lower in alcohol with pronounced minerality and freshness. But also, the region can promote its other indigenous varietals beyond nebbiolo (if there’s one recurring theme in Alpine wines, it’s grapes that the mass market has never heard of). The precedent is there, and Kunzli shared that 70% of his portfolio is not nebbiolo, including wines made with vespolina, croatina and uva rara, as well as some super niche grapes called durasa, slarina, and neretto. One of his most popular bottles is a field blend called “Maggiorina” that’s an homage to a system of planting dating back to pre-Roman times, which seems a world away from anything produced in Burgundy.
Moreover, there is still some undiscovered terrain to be found in Alto Piemonte: the commune of Sostegno, for example, in the province of Biella, with high elevation and views of Mont Blanc, and just a tiny amount of wine production at the moment. There’s untapped potential, even if it’s not immediately evident to the Italian authorities, who would need to give permission to develop the land. “It would require maybe some pressure from outside,” said Kunzli. “But anyway, it's nice because it's like a jewel, a small thing there. And, why not? Not to be completely known in the end, but to be good.”
Such an assessment is music to our ears, as is Kunzli’s proud description of the singularity of wines from Alto Piemonte and Boca. “Our wines, they seem light, but they are quite full-bodied. When they are aged sometimes, they kill all the Barolos - they are much more powerful than Barolos, because our wines have a lot of minerality and a lot of acidity which releases a lot of energy.”
But of course, even a deeply-rooted winemaker can’t resist: “Our wines are much more fine…much more Burgundian.”
Great read, pleasant and well documented! Thanks.
My take: Alto-piedmont is Alpine, like Western (Pinerolese, Valsusa, colline Saluzzesi) not the rest of Piedmont even if we get absolutely stunning views of the Alps from Dogliani. Basically anything North or West of Torino.
And yes we love the wines from Il Piane 🥰🥰🥰. Also, barrique can also do pretty subtle and light touch wines if not new and not too extracted...