From: Lessona (Alto Piemonte), Italy
Blend: 85% Nebbiolo Rose, 15% Vespolina
Tasting Notes: Wild strawberries meet dark cherry here in this lip-smackingly good rosato. It’s subtly floral, with a beautiful minerality that lends itself to a long, lingering finish. If you’ve ever been a fan of Sancerre rosé, you’ll find yourself a new love here.
Pairing: Super versatile, this rosato may be paired with heavier dishes from the area; charcuterie and pasta. Classic dishes include veal tonnato, rosemary risotto, and fried zucchini blossom. A lemony saffron risotto is also magnificent as a pairing. We’re sharing a recipe that plays with fresh, savory, and briny by Ali Slagle for Grilled Chicken with Parsely-Olive Sauce.
About. Proprietà Sperino is the realization of a long-term dream: to restore the important tradition of Lessona (located in Alto Piemonte, once the area (along with its more prestigious neighbour, Gattinara) where long-lived Nebbiolo-based wines were first made) wines by recovering the historic vineyards and cellars and produce a wine with the greatest respect for local tradition.
Originally a property of the Sperino family, the estate was passed down to the De Marchi family, collateral relatives of the Sperinos, who had left no direct heirs. In the ‘1970's, Paolo De Marchi moved to Tuscany where he founded Isole & Olena, which played a leading role in the rebirth of Chianti Classico. In 1999, Paolo and son Luca returned to Piemonte and took the reins of the historic family estate, at the Castle of Lessona in Via Sperino.
Proprietà Sperino lies in the Castello quarter of the village of Lessona (Biella), among the foothills of the North Piedmont Alps. The whole area is a district with a long tradition of wine growing: at its height in the late eighteen-hundreds, the area covered by vineyards amounted to over forty-thousand hectares, but later on the difficulty of cultivating the district and the attraction of the fashion industry in Biella and nearby Milan, Turin and Switzerland led to their gradual abandon. Today, the vines are almost totally submerged by woods, and reconstruction is long and laborious, but the climatic peculiarities of Lessona have always given the Nebbiolo grape (locally known as ‘Spanna’), qualitative characteristics so unique as to make every effort worthwhile.
The estate now counts eight hectares of vines, at the foot of Monte Rosa. Six are in Lessona, split between the Belvedere, Ormeggio, Castagnola, Rava and Covà vineyards. The other two and a half make up the Madonna degli Angeli vineyard around the hamlet of Forte, in Bramaterra country. Most of the vines are in the historic district of Ori (meaning ‘gold’ in Italian), so-called for its yellow bright and deep marine sands characterizing the soil on the sun drenched pre-alpine plateau of Orolungo.
The vineyards have never seen herbicides or chemical fertilizers: only the traditional coverage with copper and sulfate. All the harvesting is by hand, in several passages to assure that each vine has the perfect quality of grapes for each wine.
