Colombera & Garella Lessona ‘Pizzaguerra’ 2016

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Cristiano Garella has emerged as the voice of the younger generation in Alto Piemonte and is, along with Roberto Conterno, the region’s greatest ambassador. Garella makes wines for his Colombera & Garella project and also consults for a number of other estates. I was deeply impressed with these current releases.

Antonio Galloni

About Colombera & Garella

Cristiano Garella, winemaker to several estates in the region, partnered with the Colombera family in 2010 for their own project. Today, these are some of the most exciting, and interesting, wines in Piedmont. The ancient soils of Bramaterra and Lessona produce high tension, fresh, perfumed and energetic Nebbiolo, blended with the local varieties Croatina and Vespolina.

Colombera & Garella – Giacomo Colombera & Cristiano Garella – is a partnership that you are going to hear a lot about, not just when it comes to the revival of the wines from alto Piemonte, but also as one of Italy’s most exciting new wineries. Cristiano was so obsessed by wine in his teens that he begged his brother to drive him south to the Langhe where he knocked on the doors of the best estates, spending all his pocket money to taste and learn. Walter Speller nominates Cristiano as “one of Italy’s youngest and most talented oenologists”. After a few years in the Langhe, Cristiano returned home and teamed up with friend Giacomo, who was working his family vineyards, and they set out to make Nebbiolo wines with an emphasis on highlighting the “the different expressions of place, municipality by municipality”. The vineyards, mostly in the DOC’s of Bramaterra and Lessona, are stony and rich in minerals and have pH of 4 (half that of Barbaresco).

The resulting wines are fine and elegant, the softer tannins make them approachable and the acidity makes them extremely long lived. In alto Piemonte Nebbiolo is often blended with two other local grapes, Vespolina and Croatina. Vespolina is high in acid, floral and savoury with white pepper and raspberry fruit whilst Croatina is fleshy with plummy fruit and hints of chocolate and coffee. Farming is sustainable with strictly natural yeasts in the winery and all the wines are fermented in concrete without temperature control. The wines are not fined or filtered and sulphur is kept to an absolute minimum. And definitely no new wood!

You’ll need a solid grasp of Italian to get the most out of these films.

In the Vineyard

Appellation: Lessona.
Name: Pizzaguerra.
Hectares: 1.2 Ha.
Altitude: 350 m / 1150 ft.
Type of soils: Acidic pH (4.3), yellow sand of sea origin.
Exposure: South / Southwest.
Varieties: 95% Nebbiolo, 5% Vespolina.
Vine age: 10 years old.
Planting Density: 4000 vines/hectare.
Trellis system: Guyot.
Harvest date: Around October 10th.
Harvest technique: Hand harvested.
Agricultural technique: Practising organic; copper, sulfur.
Yield: 3000 kilograms / hectare.

In the Winery

Yeasts: Native.
Alcoholic fermentation: 10 days in concrete tanks with 30 days skin contact, without temperature control.
Malolactic fermentation: Spontaneous, in May-June.
Élevage: 24 months in second and third passage tonneaux.
Clarification, filtration: None.
Sulphur: 75 mg/L total, 30 mg/L free.
Other products added?: None.
Annual production: 250 cases.
Alcoholic %: from 12% to 13.5%.
Closure and bottle: Natural cork, 750 ml Bordeaux bottle.

A brief history of Alto Piemonte by Walter Speller

Until the end of the 19th century, before phylloxera ravaged its vineyards, every slope and hill in this area was covered with vines. At the time, wines from Ghemme, Boca and Gattinara, to name just three of the seven, nowadays dwarf-like denominations, commanded higher prices in the grand cafes and restaurants of Turin than the crus of Burgundy. The area never recovered from the double whammy of phylloxera and a devastating spring frost in 1904 that eradicated whole swathes of its vineyards. The ensuing crisis forced many grape growers to abandon their properties and to emigrate overseas or move to Turin and Milan to build a new existence there.

Nature took its course and shrubs and woods soon took over the ancient vineyard sites. Remnants of its former glory stubbornly survived into the 20th century, until in the 1970s it was dealt another blow when a wave of modernisation swept through Italy’s cellars. It triggered a fashion for concentrated, fullbodied, deeply coloured wines, often aged in French barriques, and strongly advocated by Italy’s all-powerful wine guides. In the process the fresh, elegant wines from Alto Piemonte were reduced to mere anachronisms in what had now become ‘modern Italy’.

Statistics give a glimpse of the enormous scale of the decline. From the reported 40,000 ha (100,000 acres) of vineyards at the end of the 19th century only 780 ha remain today, with Boca (9.61 ha), Bramaterra (26.6 ha), Fara (4.82 ha), Lessona (17.5 ha), Ghemme (25.74 ha) and Sizzano (4.80 ha) mere snippets compared with Gattinara’s 63.93 ha. The total extinction of the smallest of these minuscule DOCs was prevented only by the creation of two overarching denominations, Colline Novaresi (which includes Boca, Ghemme, Sizzano and Fara) and Coste della Sesia (Lessona and Gattinara) in 2011. Although farmers continue to cultivate grapes here, their holdings are often less than half a hectare, which makes estate bottling not a viable option, which is why most of the grapes are sold off to co-ops or merchant-bottlers.

Where in the World is Colombera & Garella?

Colombera & Garella is located on the outskirts of Lessona, in the Alto Piemonte.