Gattinara
1 cantina e 18 vini. In the far north-east of Piedmont, at the foot of Monte Rosa, the vineyards of Gattinara fill a bowl of hills behind the town. This is Alto Piemonte, where Nebbiolo is called Spanna, and the soil is unlike the Langhe's: the subsoil is volcanic in origin, full of porphyry and granite and rich in potassium, magnesium and iron. The slopes face west and south-west, and a rocky spur of more than 500 metres to the east shelters them from the mountain winds. Continua a leggere ↓
Cantine che producono Gattinara
Vini di Gattinara
Gattinara in breve
The wine is 90 to 100 per cent Nebbiolo, with Vespolina (no more than four per cent) and Uva Rara allowed to make up the rest; vineyards lie between 250 and 550 metres, the whole commune of Gattinara and nowhere else. It ages 35 months from the first of November of the harvest year, 24 of them in wood; a Riserva 47, with 36 in wood.
Vines were here before the Romans. Wine was exported as early as 1378; in 1525 Mercurino di Gattinara, chancellor to Charles V, sent casks of it to the courts of Europe; and in 1872 the government set up a royal experimental wine station and school in the town. Gattinara became a DOC in 1967 and a DOCG in 1990.