“I can’t say ‘no’ as it is one of the best old vineyards” is a repeated refrain from Paolo Montà.
The winery has grown from the original 1.5 hectares around the original country house to five hectares today. Recent acquisitions have been courtesy of older growers calling it a day and offering their venerable patches of land to La Palazzina. Paolo can’t resist a scrap of vineyard planted with Nebbiolo and a few plants of Croatina, Vespolina or Uva Rara, especially if it is Maggiorina-trained. This is an ancient training system in which four vines are planted together and then trained to create a single square around the trunks in the centre. The planting density is very low (1,500–2,000 plants per hectare) as the idea in the past was to grow your other crops under the vines. It looks beautiful and bears great quality fruit if the vines are old, but has to be worked entirely by hand. Some of these ancient survivors are now centenarians.
In 2015, La Palazzina was able to buy Balmi Bioti, an open 0.8 hectares vineyard at 360 metres elevation which faces east and has conventional trellising. The vineyard is on the hill whose name, Bramaterra, was given to the denomination when it was created in 1979. The vineyard was planted fairly recently (2002, 2004, 2009) with the classic blend to make Bramaterra DOCG: 70 per cent Nebbiolo (planted in the oldest part) and then ten per cent each of Croatina, Vespolina and Uva Rara. The name of the vineyard in the local dialect means ‘naked rock’ as there are only 20–30 centimetres of soil above the rock. This has been addressed by applying manure every second year to increase yields to a viable level. The soils vary between sand broken down from the porphyry which lies below and helpful clay elements which improve water retention. The fruit from this vineyard is vinified as a single-vineyard wine.
As with the other red wines here, all the fruit is destemmed on arrival in the winery and fermented with ambient yeast in concrete tanks using a pied de cuve to start fermentation reliably. Maceration on the skins lasts between two and four weeks, depending on the year, with the wine being racked off once the cap has dropped. The free run and the pressed wine are then held in stainless steel for a fortnight to allow the gross lees to drop out before moving to used tonneaux and 10 hL casks. Balmi Bioti is aged for between 24 and 36 months, depending on the vintage.
‘Franco’ is a very special bottling from fruit in a neighbour’s vineyard in the historic Cicogna zone. The blend here is 70 per cent Nebbiolo, a higher than usual percentage of Uva Rara at 20 per cent, which gives a lightness and elegance to the wine, the remainder of the blend being split between Croatina and Vespolina. The first vintages, from 2022, cannot be labelled Bramaterra as the vineyard was not registered as such in time. Some vines remain from the nineteenth century before phylloxera arrived, while the rest average about 50 years. The soil is pink porphyry, fast draining, with very low fertility.
Paolo Montà is driven by the desire to show the quality of the wines that can be made in Bramaterra. His father had this dream but was not able to deliver it fully. Equally important is the drive to cherish and put back into production the genuinely old vines that are still to be found in the patches of vineyard that remain between the encroaching woods that have taken over where vineyards were to be found in the past.
Finally, Paolo has a passionate belief in what Croatina brings to Bramaterra’s wines. Many producers want to change the regulations so that the wines here could be 100 per cent Nebbiolo, but that would be a mistake, according to Paolo, who cherishes its deep colour, its dark fruit and its firm tannins and acidity. “Nebbiolo misses something without Croatina in the blend.”
Wines
La Palazzina Bramaterra Riserva
2018
La Palazzina Bramaterra Riserva
2019