2016 Proprieta Sperino, Lessona, 6x750ml
100% Nebbiolo
Alcohol: 14%
Alcohol: 14%
Availability: 4 weeks
Case size: 6 / Bottle size: 750ml
Duty Status
From £290.00
Critics Score: 94
Publication: Stephen Brook, Decanter
Drinking Dates: 2023-2035
The 2016 oozes charm, with its ripe cherry and mint aromas. The palate is tannic and rather austere but the Nebbiolo needs time to evolve and open up. The fine-grained tannins give texture and support the tangy acidity, and the finish is elegant and very long. This is a great vintage but the wine is still too youthful and will benefit from cellaring.
This splendid 10 hectare hillside estate is situated in the small town of Lessona, near Biella in northern Piemonte. It passed into the De Marchi family (of top Chianti Classico estate, Isole e Olena) through their relative, Felice Sperino, a passionate viticulturist and professor in Turin.
Since the 1970s, Paolo De Marchi has dreamed of revitalising the Sperino estate, a dream that has come to fruition with the help of his elder son, Luca, who now runs the estate and makes the wines with Paolo’s guidance.
The wines are consistently superb. They are very Burgundian in style, light in colour yet intense, scented and long. The Lessona is majestic. Made solely from Nebbiolo, it is intense yet velvety, thanks to the soil in this zone that yields softer tannins in the grapes than those found in Nebbiolo from the Langhe.
Grapes for this wine are grown in the Ormeggio, Castagnola and Belvedere vineyards in Lessona in the Orolungo region. Altitudes range from 290-350 metres above sea level. Soils in Lessona are unique: they originated from a super-volcano explosion 280 million years ago, and were then covered by the sea before resurfacing with the birth of the Alps. This left marine sands from the Pliocene period (known as “Ori di Lessona”) on an igneous rock subsoil, mixed with more recent glacial sediment. The soil is rich in minerals and trace elements including iron, manganese, aluminium and zinc. The high acidity (pH 4.5-5.5) of the soil makes minerals more available to the vines.
The 2016 vintage started with a mild winter, followed by a cool and wet spring with some hailstorms in April in the area of Bramaterra, in Brusnengo. Summertime was dry and mild with plenty of sunshine. Thanks to the warm and dry September the grapes reached a perfect maturity and arrived on the sorting table healthy and juicy. Harvest started in the first week of October. 2016 is a vintage of lower yields, promising very aromatic, elegant wines, full of minerality and freshness.
The grapes are sorted while on the conveyor belt, then destemmed and gently pressed then fed by gravity into the fermentation tank. Fermentation with natural yeasts in open topped wooden fermenters. Skin maceration lasts 28 days, with regular punching down of the cap. The wine then remained 18 months sur lie.
Since the 1970s, Paolo De Marchi has dreamed of revitalising the Sperino estate, a dream that has come to fruition with the help of his elder son, Luca, who now runs the estate and makes the wines with Paolo’s guidance.
The wines are consistently superb. They are very Burgundian in style, light in colour yet intense, scented and long. The Lessona is majestic. Made solely from Nebbiolo, it is intense yet velvety, thanks to the soil in this zone that yields softer tannins in the grapes than those found in Nebbiolo from the Langhe.
Grapes for this wine are grown in the Ormeggio, Castagnola and Belvedere vineyards in Lessona in the Orolungo region. Altitudes range from 290-350 metres above sea level. Soils in Lessona are unique: they originated from a super-volcano explosion 280 million years ago, and were then covered by the sea before resurfacing with the birth of the Alps. This left marine sands from the Pliocene period (known as “Ori di Lessona”) on an igneous rock subsoil, mixed with more recent glacial sediment. The soil is rich in minerals and trace elements including iron, manganese, aluminium and zinc. The high acidity (pH 4.5-5.5) of the soil makes minerals more available to the vines.
The 2016 vintage started with a mild winter, followed by a cool and wet spring with some hailstorms in April in the area of Bramaterra, in Brusnengo. Summertime was dry and mild with plenty of sunshine. Thanks to the warm and dry September the grapes reached a perfect maturity and arrived on the sorting table healthy and juicy. Harvest started in the first week of October. 2016 is a vintage of lower yields, promising very aromatic, elegant wines, full of minerality and freshness.
The grapes are sorted while on the conveyor belt, then destemmed and gently pressed then fed by gravity into the fermentation tank. Fermentation with natural yeasts in open topped wooden fermenters. Skin maceration lasts 28 days, with regular punching down of the cap. The wine then remained 18 months sur lie.
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