Bruno Giacosa Nebbiolo d'Alba Casa Vinicola 2021

There are very few stories in the world of wine that are more important to tell than that of Bruno Giacosa. A man’s legacy etched into lore, and with such gravitas that it is still felt today in his native Piemonte by almost all the producers in the region.

Born in 1929 in Neive where the winery remains, Bruno Giacosa spent his formative teenage years working with his father Carlo as a ‘commerciante’ or grape broker. This very important but often overlooked part of Giacosa’s history is perhaps the key to understanding his unrivalled ability to select fruit, even that which he hadn’t grown himself. The family’s income at that time revolved solely around the ability to sell fruit to winemakers, and taking any fruit to Vinify themselves would have been a conflict of interest. In fact, his father so vehemently opposed the young Bruno’s intention to bottle his own wine in the early 1960’s, that he had to do so without the blessing of the family.

The first vintage wearing the label Bruno Giacosa was 1961, a single Barbaresco bottling from a mixture of vineyards as was custom at the time. It was the prominent wine author and critic Luigi Veronelli who at the time was crusading for Piedmont’s adoption of the French ‘cru’ classification of vineyard that convinced Giacosa to bottle and (importantly) label single vineyard wines soon after his first vintage. The first labelled cru bottling was the 1964 Barbaresco Vigna Santo Stefano, but it is possible that even the first wine used fruit exclusively from there. While the obsession with site continued and strengthened throughout Bruno Giacosa’s career, so did the predilection to purchase fruit from growers rather than buy vineyards himself. Though Giacosa was not the only winemaker somewhat late to the party in buying land in the Langhe, it is regarded as his greatest missed opportunity. Some of Italy’s greatest wines ever were Giacosa’s red label bottlings from Santo Stefano di Neive, Villero and Collina Rionda, none of which are produced today by the estate.

In vinous literacy, it is impossible to read about the Langhe without reading about Giacosa and his contemporary Angelo Gaja. While Gaja was a willing frontman for the region, Giacosa continued to toil in the background. Both leading from the front and each producing the region’s best wines. Winemaking involves a great many small decisions, each affecting the next. One can only hope to get them right, to capture what there was in the grapes to begin with. - Bruno Giacosa

Giacosa’s Nebbiolo d’Alba uses fruit sourced solely from the Roero area, and the wine alongside both the Arneis and Nebbiolo Valmaggiore from here have a long and storied history with Bruno Giacosa. It is no coincidence that 1974 saw the first bottling of both Arneis and Nebbiolo d’Alba from Giacosa, as they were sourced from the same growers. The same is mostly true today, and where the Arneis is grown in the predominantly North-facing slopes of the vineyards in Roero, the Nebbiolo comes from the South slopes of the same sites.

This is a stunning bottle of Nebbiolo that defies its humble DOC. Notably, it is not a Langhe Nebbiolo and carries quite a different profile to the Nebbiolo from further South. Nor is it one of the fashionable new pseudo-Barolo’s or ‘declassified’ senior expressions of Nebbiolo. Instead it is a wine that is very elegant, high toned but sure-footed and very much baring the maker’s mark of restrained power and proudly the young Nebbiolo of the range. 

Intense Ruby red. The nose has evident notes of red fruits, strawberries, blackcurrants and raspberries. The palate is typical to the variety with a great freshness and structure.

The Finer Details
Style - Red Wine
Varietal - Nebbiolo
Country - Italy
Region - Piedmont
Vintage - 2021
Bottle Size - 750ml
ABV - 14.5%