2013 Roagna pre-shipment offer

Timeless wines. Ceaseless labour. Pure terroir.

Tasting with Luca Roagna into the evening in a transept of their new cathedral of a cellar is to spend time meditating on the beauty of life and how enhancing and transcending wine can be. While you slowly draw the sense from the glass, Luca is energetically answering questions about winemaking or farming, or running around for more samples. Meanwhile in the main space Luca's fiancée and dad are labelling or packing or checking. Work never stops here - in the vineyard when it's light, in the cellar when it's not.

Farming is low input - so low that after the vines reach the age of fifteen there's no need to green-harvest to reduce yields: the vineyard is in perfect balance. Ask Luca about the clonal selection in those vineyards and you'll gain an understanding of site-specific vines that have become habituated to these particular soils because they are all taken from cuttings taken in those vineyards. This entirely transcends the normal thinking on vine choice. In the cellar the fermentation takes a couple of weeks, but skin contact lasts a minimum of two months and often nearer three.

It is this detailed level of thinking and work that gives us these precise, pure and emotional wines from the soul of Piedmont. With their fine tannins, super-mineral but fruit-coated flavours and their elegant deployment of power these are not just must-have elements of your cellar. Rather these wines are an essential part of your drinking experience and personal history. From small plots and made to exacting standards set by few producers and met by fewer, you just have to buy into Luca Roagna's vision of a perfect world. /CW

Offered subject to remaining unsold; for shipment spring 2019