Alcohol: 14%
Grape(s): 100% Nebbiolo
Location: Piedmont, Italy
Tasting Notes: The extended aging gives the wine an elegantly earthy character. Red fruits, cranberry soaked leather, clove, nutmeg, orange peel, and dried roses. A touch of VA provides some balsamic notes with damp cellar framing the medium tannins and medium acidity.
Notes: Gattinara lies a good 60 miles north of Barbaresco and Barolo, but its soil structure is much closer to Mt. Etna—altogether volcanic, the difference being that the Alps are much older than Etna. The Langhe appellations have limestone and clay, and there’s none of that in Gattinara’s iron-rich red soils. The DOCG is the best known of the historic upper Piedmont appellations. Legend has it that Mercurino Arborio, Marchese de Gattinara, a local nobleman and wine lover who became the last imperial chancellor to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in the first half of the 16th century, did much to promote the wines of his region. Entering our century, Gattinara had the best-preserved viticulture of the upper appellations, thanks in large part to a couple of prominent wine producing families.
The Domain: Following World War II, Gervasio Fabris left Veneto for a small farm in the foothills of Italy’s western Alps. The farm was in Roasio, a village in the northern reaches of Piedmont, and Gervasio tended vines (and cows) in the forgotten appellation of Bramaterra. During the economic boom of the sixties he, like many in the region, found work in the local factories, and he kept on the job in the seventies throughout the period of the Red Brigades and violent labor strife. He also continued farming vines, in particular one plot of two acres belonging to Roasio’s church. From this plot he made the church’s wine, kept some for his family, and sold the rest to a couple local restaurants.
His son, Sandrine, came to help in the vines after school let out, and gained a lifelong love for vineyard work. He went on to run a laundry service, then retired from that to help his own sons–Marco and Claudio–in their vines. Upon Gervasio’s passing, the two brothers had decided to follow in their grandfather’s footsteps and make wine in their region. The debut vintage was 2014.
The venture is called Cantina Gaggiano (Gaa-jha-no). Grandfather Gervasio was the spiritual guide, joined, tragically, by father Sandrine in October 2020 when a tractor accident took him. He had happily taken on the role of vineyard manager, as well as financial backer, for his sons when his retirement from running a laundry service coincided with the start of their new business. Marco and Claudio provided labor and capital, and Marco (photo above) built a small winery where he lives in Lessona. Pietro Mascazini is jack-of-all-trades and general manager. Pietro grew up in Gattinara, where he worked in his family’s osteria in the old quarter and became fascinated with the local wines (the map of Garrinara’s vineyards linked below is from their osteria). Paolo Bonora is the chief vineyard guy, coming from tenures with Travaglini, Anzivino, and Nervi Conterno. Cristiano Garella, the passionate Young Turk of the Alto Piemonte, is their consulting enologist. Below, left and right, are Cristiano and Pietro.
The 2014 wine came from the first vines that Marco bought: 1.7 acres of a parcel named Galizia in Gattinara. Below is a photo of the hodgepodge of Gattinara’s vineyards (the Galizia parcel is further up in the hills just out of the photo to the right). The amount of forest is even more dominant in the adjacent appellations, whereas back in the day, as in Barolo currently, there was very little; it was all vines. In 2016 Marco acquired 5.6 acres in Bramaterra; subsequently, he got 3.7 acres in Lessona, which are being restored. Soon they will be bottling wine from all three of those once famous appellations, the only domaine to do so. The name Gaggiano comes from the neighborhood where Marco lives in Lessona, traditionally called Gajàn.
