And Uncorked behaving badly
It was all Ed's fault - definitely nothing to do with me. After an excellent dinner and a bottle or two of Mauro Franchino's finest, climbing up a wooded hill in the dark to reach a medieval tower seemed like an excellent idea. Of course, round the other side of the hill there is an easy road up, but that wasn't the way we were going. We got over a stream and up an increasingly steep muddy embankment along the edge of someone's vineyard, but discretion finally became the better part of valour at a tall fence blocking the way to an even steeper vineyard. The tower we had failed to reach overlooks the Alto Piemontese commune of Gattinara, and is or was a symbol of its wines. Most producers have long since abandoned the generic label showing the tower which the local consorzio once created to facilitate estate bottling, but it still proudly adorns Mauro Franchino's bottles.
Gattinara is tucked in the hills between Turin and Milan, some 90km north east of Barolo. In the 19th century, the village was more prized for its Nebbiolo (locally called Spanna) than either Barolo or Barbaresco, but winemaking in the region went into a long, slow decline. When Mauro Franchino began making wine here in the early 1960s, he was very much swimming against the tide. The wines of Gattinara are stylistically different from Barolo, relying less on power and more on perfume and elegance. But with tangy acidity and sometimes formidable tannins, they have a long capacity to age.
With over 50 vintages of Gattinara under his belt, Mauro Franchino has devoted his life to making wine here. The winemaking style is very traditional, with grapes from his three hectares of vines fermented in concrete vats, then aged in botti for three years. Now in his late 70s, Mauro has recently handed control over to his nephew Alberto - but he was still fully in charge at the time of north Italy's blessed 2016 vintage. Of the 10 or so vintages of Franchino Gattinara Uncorked has tasted and followed, the 2016 is the most beautiful. It is both delicate and structured, with powerful but deftly-woven tannins, fine notes of mandarin and cherry, a cherry pit dryness and complexing herbal elements. /NT
Offered subject to remaining unsold; available imminently
