Italy’s top Pinot Noirs

Although it’s not an Italian native, Pinot Noir thrives in certain cool-climate spots across the country. Walter Speller charts its progress and recommends some of the best examples...

Italy’s top Pinot Noirs

Key facts: Italian Pinot Noir

Total hectares planted 5,044ha in 2010 (3,314ha in 2000)

Largest total surface 2,956ha in Lombardy’s Pavia for the production of base wine for the sparkling wine industry in Italy’s north; Franciacorta’s total is 387ha. South Tyrol and Trentino boast 553ha of Pinot Noir, and increasing

Aspect  The key to success with Pinot Noir is high altitude, followed by north and west vineyard expositions

Styles  Savoury and mineral in alpine areas like South Tyrol and Valle d’Aosta; dense yet elegant and ageworthy in Tuscany’s Apennine Mountains 

‘My wish has always been to make a La Tâche 1953: elegance combined with power, and varietally pure.’ I am with Franz Haas, veteran wine producer in alpine South Tyrol, who has just poured me a glass of Pònkler, his beautiful single-vineyard Pinot Noir planted at an incredible density of 10,000 vines per hectare at 750m, high up in the Alps. When I protest, saying it doesn’t make sense to pursue this in a radically different terroir, he corrects me: ‘Of course my guiding light is Burgundy. I need that guiding light to find out what I can achieve in South Tyrol.’ But rather than Burgundy, cool climate seems to be the key principle that lies behind Pònkler.

From his mother, Haas inherited a vineyard in Mazon – a southwest-facing plateau at 400m, which was historically famous in Italy for its fine Pinot Noirs. A passionate Burgundy lover, he had come to the conclusion as early as 1999 that, due to global warming, he had to go higher and higher. Planting vines as high as 1,000m, he initially faced resistance from the local authorities, who feared his preferred sites would be too cool to ripen grapes properly, but Haas went ahead anyway. His extraordinary Pònkler more than proves him right.

In the beginning

Pinot Noir is so strongly associated with Burgundy that it may come as a surprise that the fickle grape variety has been cultivated in Italy for more than 150 years. Pinot Noir first arrived in the late 1830s, in South Tyrol, under the auspice of Archduke John of Austria, who had taken a keen interest in the region’s viticultural development. During the same period the grape also entered Sicily, on Etna’s southwest flank, where Barone Felice Spitaleri planted it at up to 1,000m after trialling different altitudes for many years at his Castello Sollicchiata estate, having built 100km of stone terraces to cultivate French varieties, including Pinot Noir.

Its third point of entry in Italy, in the 1860s, was Tuscany, on Marchese Vittorio degli Albizzi’s Pomino estate at an altitude of 700m (now in the possession of Frescobaldi through marriage). Like Archduke John of Austria and Barone Felice Spitaleri, Albizzi was a strong proponent of the modernisation of Italy’s viticulture after it had been devastated by powdery mildew. He believed that the French varieties would boost the country’s battered wine business. As if to prove Albizzi right, to this day Frescobaldi produces Pinot Noir on its Pomino estate.

Albizzi’s idea that French, rather than local, varieties would lead to economic success took hold in Italy, especially from the 1970s onwards. Although Pinot Noir is far less accommodating than Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the vineyard, it received the same treatment, pushed relentlessly to ripeness in the vineyard and given international polish in barriques in the cellar. In general, and unsurprisingly, it failed to enthral Burgundy lovers, but in a country such as Italy, which is extraordinarily blessed with myriad terroirs and macroclimates, winemakers were determined to master the world’s most prestigious red grape variety.

With an admiration for Burgundy regularly the leitmotif for persevering with this difficult variety, nowadays Italy’s best Pinot Noirs are original expressions of the place they are grown without any need to copy Burgundy – and at affordable prices. What Italy’s best Pinot Noirs almost all have in common is a cool-climate and high-altitude site, something already acknowledged 150 years ago by the three noblemen who all planted Pinot Noir in cool or mountainous sites in the hope of emulating Burgundy’s fresh climate.

Pinot expression

Not far from Haas, on the other side of the Adige river in Eppan, Marlies and Martin Abraham run a small estate called Weingut Abraham. Their 2ha of east-facing Pinot Noir vines lie at an altitude of 500m. Half is planted on volcanic porphyry, the other half on deep, chalky soils. ‘My father and I planted Pinot Noir because we are fascinated by it – there is no rational explanation,’ Martin says.

Although Eppan is much cooler than Mazon, the Pinot Noir clones they planted caused problems. ‘It’s warmer here than in Burgundy, resulting in more compact bunches,’ Abraham explained. Their compactness can cause the berries to be squeezed, causing rot inside the bunches. The remedy was to painstakingly cut out single berries immediately after fruit set to loosen up the bunches, but with progressive vine age this is less necessary.

Abraham ferments his grapes in tronconic oak casks and during fermentation once a day he gently pushes the cap into the juice. The total time the wine remains on the skins is an extraordinary 35 days. Since 2016 he trialled whole-bunch fermentation too, which he finds results in increased freshness. The wines age for at least 18 months in cask. The result is a highly original expression of Pinot Noir; savoury rather than fruity, and bursting with minerals. Abraham, who makes equally fine Pinot Bianco and succulent, ageworthy Schiava grown on old pergolas, is one to watch.

In the hallowed grounds of Barolo, in the Ravera cru, young Gian Luca Colombo manages a tiny plot of less than one-third of a hectare of Pinot Noir vines at 350m. What the vineyard lacks in altitude it makes up for with its perfect north exposition, which is too cold for Nebbiolo. Colombo, who consults for newcomer Réva in Monforte d’Alba, used to work at the Terre del Barolo cooperative. It is here that, during the 2007 harvest, one of the co-op’s vine-growers delivered a batch of Pinot Noir grapes of such high quality he decided to rent the plot.

I asked Colombo why he makes Pinot Noir in a region that is world-famous for Barolo. The succinct answer is that he couldn’t afford a Barolo vineyard, and as a consultant he didn’t want to become his clients’ competitor. But there is a deeper motive: like Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir is one of the world’s greatest grape varieties, and Colombo likes a challenge. Without trying to imitate Burgundy, he does take the grape’s fine aromas as a lead.

‘I want plenty on the nose,’ he says. ‘If the year allows, I want to make a wine that is aromatic and perfumed.’ To that aim he ferments Pinot Noir almost like a white wine at a temperature of 22˚C maximum. It stays on the skins for more than 30 days, while he submerges the cap, like Barolo, with wooden planks during the last 15 days. In the cellar he ages the wine in Austrian oak, but is also experimenting with terracotta pots. ‘I don’t want any additional flavour to creep in; I want to strip away as much as possible,’ he adds.

Cool contender

The mystique of Pinot Noir has found its counterpart in Vicenzo Tommasi, in the Casentino Valley high up in the Tuscan Apennines. At his Podere della Civettaja, Tomassi – who in a former life was consultant oenologist at Frescobaldi’s Pomino and Nipozzano estates – has planted Pinot Noir in a windy spot at 500m, too cool for Sangiovese to ripen, and as in Burgundy, with 9,000 vines per hectare. His increasingly fine Pinot Noirs have achieved such fame that the region has been dubbed Gevrey Casentino.

Tommasi believes that the Tuscan Apennine mountains have many ideal spots for cultivating Pinot Noir, but modest renditions obscured that fact. ‘They were so expensive, and yet so average, that it wasn’t taken seriously. Tuscany was already worldfamous for full-bodied red wines, so why bother with a variety that didn’t seem suited to the terroir?’ Tommasi explains.

Pinot Noir’s most southerly appearance is on Mount Etna. At 850m in the Contrada Montelaguardia, Vito Catania of the Gulfi estate decided to plant the highest part of his vineyard here with Burgundy clones. Although Nerello Mascalese is Etna’s main protagonist, due to its high altitude this part of the vineyard falls outside of the Etna DOC, whose upper limit is 700m. In the case of Gulfi, this disadvantage became a stroke of luck. Salvo Foti, Gulfi’s consultant oenologist and a true hardliner when it comes to protecting Etna’s ancient system of high-density bush vines, planted the vineyard with an astonishing 10,000 vines per hectare all tied to poles and so dense that only a mule can work the soils.

Through and through a Nerello Mascalese advocate, he rolled his eyes when he showed me the beautiful spot, but Pino, as the wine is called, is a seductive concoction of raspberries with a touch of oak. Approachable in its youth, this wine needs time to unfurl and show proper characteristics, as evidenced by the complex 2010 I tasted recently. Perhaps planting Pinot Noir was never a gamble, as Gulfi simply continues Etna’s Pinot tradition that begun 150 years ago with Barone Felice Spitaleri on Castello di Solicchiata.

Walter Speller is an Italian wine specialist.

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