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Vineyards in Colli Tortonesi, Piedmont, Italy getty The highest temperatures in Piedmont, one of 20 administrative regions that constitute Italy, are found near its southeast, around the city of Tortona. This land is renowned for agricultural bounty, including Montèbore cheese, Volpedo peaches, Garbagna cherries, Tortona strawberries, San Sebastiano truffles, Nobile del Giarolo salami, as well as pistachio nuts, asparagus, chickpeas and apricots. It is also known for wine, and increasingly for that made from the white grape Timorasso that verged on extinction but is now rocketing upward in reputation. Within this southeastern segment of Piedmont is an amoeba shaped wine appellation named Colli Tortonesi. At 303 square miles in area (786 square kilometers) this is the same size as New York city, although hillier and greener and with a comparative population density of only 1% of that city. The wine produced here is predominantly red from the Barbera grape. But that is changing. Since 2008, territory planted with Barbera vines within the Colli have halved—dropping to 1,330 acres (539 hectares) while those planted with white Timorasso grapevines during that same period have increased by almost 1,000%—from 101 acres to 1,090 acres (41 to 440 hectares). View of sunset from Vignetti Repetto in Piedmont, Italy Roundwood Press Timorasso is a hardy and heat loving vine that produces delicate, low yielding grapes. These create wines that age well and also improve dramatically with little aging. This grape thrived in the Middle Ages, and during the 19th century its juice was sent to Austria and Switzerland to be blended with Riesling to create a sweet wine named Torbolino—meaning cloudy. For reasons that included the phylloxera louse—which decimated grapevines in the mid 1800’s—as well as the labor-intensive needs of this grape, by 1987 only 1.2 acres (0.5 hectares) of Timorasso existed in the world.…

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Filed under: News - @ April 21, 2025 6:26 pm