Perched high on a south-facing slope, the vineyards of Angelo Sega and his sons, Luca and Matteo, command extraordinary views of the River Adda valley. For generations, people have worked these steep slopes, contained by dry stone walls that, in turn, create small patches of land. In Valtellina, there are said to be 2,500 kilometres of dry stone walls. As all work has to be done by hand, much of the terracing has now been abandoned, taken over by scrub and woods.
The hardy and the committed continue to grow vines up to almost 800 metres of elevation. Every day, Barbacàn’s ancient Fiat Panda 4×4 is used to drive up the vertiginous tracks and negotiate the hairpin bends as the land falls away below. At these heights, and below the Rhaetian Alps, which rise to 3-4,000 metres, there is a constant refreshing breeze and high day-night temperature fluctuation, both conducive to high-quality grape growing. In addition, there is very little danger of frost in spring on the hillsides, whereas in the valley below, fruit trees can suffer.
Barbacàn treasures the best of the past. The principal grape variety in Valtellina is Chiavennasca, the local name for Nebbiolo, but the vineyards also have the local varieties, Chiavennaschino (Nebbiolo Rosé) , Negrera, Pignola, Rossola, Treunasca, Chiavennasca Bianca and Rossolino Rosa.
The vineyards are mainly between 60–80 years old, with some much older plants dating from 1920. The vines are trained with the Archetto Valtellinese system. In this, the replacement cane on each vine bends over in an arch. Or, as Luca says more philosophically, it bends towards the hillside and then returns towards the trunk of the vine. The trellising is made with locally-sourced chestnut posts.
The soils here are based on sand and schist, which means that they retain and radiate heat, as do the stone walls of the terracing. They are fast draining and poor in organic matter.
As Barbacàn is certified organic, a real rarity in Valtellina, the only additions they make to the soils are manure and compost. Luca is passionate about working with nature and argues that if the grapes are grown naturally, the process of fermentation will also proceed smoothly and with very little intervention. This is viticulture on a human scale, unaided by mechanisation.
The canopy of the vines is much lower than those seen in southern Piemonte. The intensity of solar radiation, due to the steepness of the slope and the high elevation, means that the fruit will ripen without a large canopy. The season is long, running from mid-March to late October.
Long, slow ripening results in the high aromatic intensity of the wines. Rain here is typically very regular, every one to two weeks in the growing season, meaning that no irrigation is required. However, Luca has installed a pipe up to his high vineyards but only from the nearby road. With a portable pump, water can be made available to spray the vines to defend against mildew as long as Luca is prepared literally to run up and down the short steep rows to deliver the treatment from the hosepipe by hand. The dry stone walls also need repairing from time to time. With all the other manual work, there is definitely no need to go to the gym at the end of the day!
Altogether Barbacàn has nine hectares of vineyard. The principal wines are classified as Valtellina Superiore and are single vineyard wines. The Söl vineyard is to be found in the Valgella subzone of Valtellina, at 480–520 m. The blend here is from 40-year-old vines, 90 per cent Chiavennasca and 10 per cent Chiavennaschino and Rossola, the latter bringing verticality to the final wine.
As the grapes are picked so late in the year, they are cool on arrival, and the temperature typically rises only to 25ºC during fermentation. The juice is fermented spontaneously in stainless steel tanks and spends around 50 days in total on the skins. Maturation follows in neutral Austrian oak cask for one year. The wines stabilise naturally due to the cold temperature in winter. As Luca says, the wines are made naturally with low intervention, but not by chance.
The aim is to produce a highly distinctive Nebbiolo wine which Luca describes as light but profound. While Valtellina wines can typically be drunk on release due to their relatively gentle tannins, their high acidity and intense fruit mean that they can mature gracefully for many years in the bottle.
