Spring Has Sprung!  After a month of sub-freezing temperatures (see pictures below) and over a meter of snow, the sun has come out and the snow has almost melted over the last month. It's amazing to walk around the vineyards, and you can see exactly how the old vineyards for Nebbiolo were staked out: the vines were planted where the snow melts first. Nebbiolo vineyards begin and end exactly where the snow melts first, and past them are Dolcetto plantings or hazelnut groves (these still have snow on the ground). The soil is awakening and in the warmest spots the first shoots of spring dandelion greens are coming up. 

Looking west toward the Winery, Feb. 2012.

Over the winter, we bottled the 2010 Valmaggiore in December and have just finished bottling both 2009 Barolo as well as the 2010 Barbera. (We will bottle the 2011 Dolcetto in June.) We took advantage of a mild spell in December and early January to get ahead on the annual pruning and then spent the cold month of February in the winery: racking, cleaning, making repairs and general upkeep. We also took a quick trip to Hungary's Tokaji region to learn more about their sweet wines.

Dolcetto vines still in snow, Nebbiolo in foreground already melted, near Serralunga

Though each year is different and we never know what to expect, we hope that bud break will begin around Easter, and flowering to continue on in mid-late May. We relish the warm days after the winter, but it also means that our busy season is about to begin: soon we will be back in the vineyards to finish the pruning work and before we know it we will be in the thick of the growing season! We are looking forward to the challenges that each year brings.

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As always, we thank you for your continued interest in our wines, and we hope to continue to fulfill your expectations of quality and excellence in the bottle.

With warmest regards, 

Luciano Sandrone

Barbara Sandrone

Luca Sandrone

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The 2011-2012 winter was mild and dry until the third week of January, when cold weather returned with a vengeance. It began snowing and just did not stop ... soon we had almost a meter of snow on the ground! After the dry fall this was very welcome, as snow is best suited to replenishing the groundwater. The snow has slowly melted over the last two weeks, and today the sun is out and the ambient temperature is a spring-like 15C/60F. 

Bottling line for 2009 Barolo

We made good use of the unusually mild December and January

to get as much work done in the vineyards as possible.  The "potatura" - pruning - is one of the most important and essential steps to making great wine.  This work will determine the health and vigor of the plant and a wrong cut may take three years to heal properly.  This is why Luciano insists that the precise work of the cuts is done by himself, Luca or the winery assistant Andrea. The rest of the crew follows pulling the cut vines from the supports, bending and tying the pruned shoot, and bundling the cut vines for composting and disposal (More below).

Why is snow better than rain for our groundwater levels? Because the soil in our vineyards is mostly clay. Rain tends to run off the clay soil without penetrating deeply into the ground, while snow, melting slowly, goes deep, especially if the weather does not get too warm too quickly.  The best conditions for melt, where the vineyards are concerned, is a slow melt a few degrees above freezing, where the snow melts slooooooooowly, and penetrates deep into the ground.

Today we are bottling, waiting for the ground to dry out a bit so

 we can continue our work in the vineyards.  As it stands, the hills are a muddy mess at the moment, and pruning is best done when your boots have a good grip on the ground - our vineyards are on steep hills!

Five new wines will be released on the first of September 2012:  

2011 Dolcetto d'Alba

2010 Barbera d'Alba

2010 Nebbiolo d'Alba "Valmaggiore"

2008 Barolo Cannubi Boschis

2008 Barolo "Le Vigne"

Technical data and tasting notes for all wines including historical vintages can be found by following the above links to our website.  We will add professional reviews as they become available.

Links to your country's importer can be found here.

Of course, our most important and eagerly anticipated release are the two Barolo, and we think 2008 will be a wine for the ages. While the wine press has made much of the cool growing season, we remember the literally perfect harvest - 7 weeks of warm days, cool nights, no rain and intense sun that resulted in one of the best crops of grapes we had seen (remember, Nebbiolo shakes off wet growing conditions easily if it is followed by a warm, dry harvest period). The 2008 Barolos will be long-lived, more classically styled wines, with their firm, nervous acidity reflecting the long, cool-ish growing season and the ripe fruit showing the effects of this last 7 weeks of perfect sun and warmth, all framed by the velvety tannins that make Barolo so distinctive. Consumers who prefer "classic"-style vintages should love the 2008 wines.   

New Release Spotlight on 2008 Barolo Le Vigne.  

We began picking for the Le Vigne Barolo on October 11, and continued as each of the 4 component vineyards reached full maturity over the next two weeks. First picked were Merli and Vignane, then Cerretta (di Monforte), then Conterni.  The higher-altitude vineyards (Cerreta and Conterni) took much longer to ripen that the first two as the 200 meter elevation difference meant that nights were considerably cooler, almost reaching the frost point.  The fruit from the higher sources gives this wine its vibrant acidity and structure.

Cantina Tasting Note:

Red/black color with no light edges. The aromas are a bit reticent at this young stage but show great potential. On the nose, layers of red and black fruits emerge with patience, especially plums and black cherries. The wine is deep and concentrated, with intense and focused cherry, chocolate and cranberry, with violets, coffee and licorice, and finally with notes of well-integrated oak. In the mouth, the tannins are still closed but very ripe and full, the mid palate is purely defined and delineated, and the finish precise and long. This is a Le Vigne to age; it easily has 15+ years ahead of it.  Drink  2016-2033.

Possibly one of the most under-appreciated and least "glamorous" parts of winery work is the annual pruning in the vineyards that occurs once the plants have lost their leaves in the fall. (We don't prune while there are still leaves as we want the plant to continue photosynthesis for as long as it can, storing energy for the winter). Pruning is a repetitive, physical task that takes a long, long time to master.  It is unusually important as a wrong cut can set a plant back three years - a bad cut will take that long to heal!

Luca in Merli

The three key points of pruning are: 1) to clear the last season's growth, 2) select the best and strongest shoot for next year's fruit, and 3) to prepare the shoot that will bear fruit the year after.
Vines will best produce fruit on shoots that emerge from one-year old wood. We use a Guyot system for all our vines that helps control yields and gives a degree of frost protection in case there are cold nights at the harvest time.

We always have to think about three year's worth of fruit production when pruning: the previous year's canes (we have just harvested the fruit off them), the current vintage's cane, and the buds for the successive year's cane. In our currently ongoing pruning, the previous year was the just-picked 2011, the current year is 2012, and the successive year is 2013.  So there is lots to think about!

First, the easy part: we cut away the current year's main fruiting cane.  This is the horizontal cane that was bent down and tied to the training wire the previous year, and from which the individual fruiting canes bud. Then we examine the remaining canes extending from the head of the trunk, looking at which of the canes were left the previous year to be the next year's fruiting cane. In this way each plant contains a message, if you will, from the person who pruned it the year before, and successfully ascertaining this message is a key element in proper pruning.  This is also why Luciano insists that this work is always done by the same people, as they know the plants intimately and know each other well enough to understand the intentions in the previous year's cut.

Luca and Andrea at work.

We find the cane that grew from the buds left for the next year's cane last year and cut away all its remaining shoots and twigs, leaving a bare cane about 50-70 cms long with between 6 and 8 buds (we count the buds! Too many and the plant will overproduce). Then we find a cane emerging from the pruned head that has 2-3 promising buds near the base of the cane - this will produce the cane for the following year's fruit - and cut away all of that cane except for a little stub with two buds on it. If this sounds complicated, it is!  

In addition, we have to think about how the plant is growing, and the shape it is taking.  The best shoot might be growing out perpendicular to the row, making it useless (the vines need to grow in the plane of the trellis wires), and we have to find the next best option. The best shoot for a fruiting cane might not be easy to bend over to train to the wines and break.  There are lots of variables and the only way to learn is through experience.

Once the cuts have been made, the rest of the crew comes through

Pruned Cane, Valmaggiore

Many people know the old adage about "Great Wine is made in the Vineyard" but few appreciate that this work begins is the dead of winter when the plants are dormant.  For us, the growing season is not just when the plants are green; our care for them extends to the full year, even to the times when snow is on the ground.

Luca and Andrea in the Snow, Vingane.

At this time of year the main work in the vineyards is the winter pruning (described above), but we are also preparing to plant the parcel of the Baudana Vineyard that we acquired last summer. As we previously reported, the lower section of this site had never been planted to vines: it was an orchard and a small pasture. That it sits in the middle of the great Baudana Cru and has perfect south-facing exposure and yet was never planted to vines - is amazing.

Last summer we did the initial preparatory work of pulling out the orchard and tilling the area, installing necessary drainage improvements and putting down a layer of composted dairy cow manure to improve the soil.

Over the winter, the manure further composted into the soil and we will begin planting the site in May or June, weather permitting. It is a very steep site and the planting will be a back-breaking two to three weeks. We will let the vines strengthen and mature for 4-6 years before using the fruit from this site. We believe that this site will add depth, structure and the characteristic tannins of Serralunga fruit to the Le Vigne Barolo.

Of course, no off-season would be complete without a bit of vacation, even one in which we have a professional interest. Luciano loves learning about other wines of the world, and so we made a quick trip to the Tokaji region of Hungaryto learn about winemaking developments and how they make their long-lived dessert wines. Over the course of three days, we visited Hetszolo, Disznoko, Royal Tokaji, Samuel Tinon, Oremus, Chateau Dereszla and Kyrialdjuvar. The area has been home to a winemaking tradition whose earliest written records span back to 1576, making this a very important area in the history of wine.

At Disznoko

Of particular interest was the method of making the wine : from the botrytised berries of Furmint, Hárslevelü, Yellow Muscat (locally called Sárgamuskotály), Kövérszölö, Zéta and Kabar. The noble rot Botrytis sucks the water out of the grapes, leaving the sugars in greater and greater concentration. Fully botrytised berries look just like raisins.

The botrytised berries are individually picked by hand (this material is called "aszu," and a single worker can pick a few kilos at most per day) and stored in vats; once the aszu berries are picked, the remaining, non-botrytised grapes are picked conventionally and a dry "base" wine is made from them. The Aszu berries are then mixed with the dry base wine to sweeten them (the word "puttonyos" refers to the quantity of aszu berries that were added to a fixed quantity of base wine, the higher the number of puttonyos, the sweeter the resulting wine). The wine is aged in barrels stored in caves carved out of the hills. We were surprised to learn that some producers had kilometers of caverns dug out underneath their wineries!  The results can be on par with the greatest Sauternes and Eiswein.

In a Tokaji Cellar