2022 Cà da l'Era "Prünent" Valli Ossolane Nebbiolo Superiore

VERY LIMITED

95 Points, Gary Walsh (TWF) - "Cherry and ripe raspberry, an alpine herb coolness, a dusting of pepper and exotic spices, pink grapefruit. It’s medium-bodied, juicy and lively, fresh raspberry and blood orange, a distinctly stony feel to tannin, aniseed, a lovely cranberry crunch to acidity, and flavour, strawberry dusted with white pepper on a bright and dusty finish of excellent length. A beautiful and distinct expression of Nebbiolo."

Our Notes

Very fruity on the nose! The palate is deep ferrous minerality & with great length.  The citrus is more in keeping with white wine citrus characters than say the orange peel we sometimes see in nebbiolo - this is almost more grapefruit in character. Delicious stuff.

Cà da l'Era fashion stunning alpine Nebbiolo from the very ancient Prünent clone – first records of it date back to the early 1300s. Prünent is a clone of Nebbiolo produced in Valli Ossolana (Piedmont) on the western side of Lake Maggiore looking back across the lake to Valtellina on the Lombardian site. Much like Valtellina it is grown on steep mountainous vineyards (often terraces cut up the hillside).It’s an obscure but beautiful clone – and Mara Toscani at Cà da l'Era produces the finest example we have tried.

Grown just a few kilometres from the Swiss border – Mara’s Prünent is raised on a combination of Guyot & Pergola (“toppia”) training systems with very old vines. It comes from a mere 1ha of terraced vineyards on very steep slopes.  The ultra cool climate & harvest conditions here have contributed to the low ABV for Nebbiolo of just 13.5%.

Production is tiny – but the quality is exceptional.  Those that managed to acquire a bottle of her 2019 would attest to this.