A taste of Italy's great red vino
Nebbiolo you can afford
If the word Nebbiolo makes your mouth water and your savings shrink, it is time to try a range of new affordable expressions of this great red grape that we have at Regional Wines.
True, affordable and Nebbiolo do not usually go in the same sentence but times are changing with the predicted recession now officially upon us, so we are adjusting our belts.
Buy and explore affordable Nebbiolo here...
Book into our Affordable Nebbiolo tasting here...
What is Nebbiolo?
The short answer is: an Italian grape variety. This is no ordinary grape. It demands a lot of the grape grower and the winemaker because it is the first grape to bud in spring and the last one to fully ripen in autumn, so it is frost prone at both ends of the season. It is also a thick skinned grape that lends itself to making enormously tannic wines that live for decades in the bottle, but that can be astringent in their youth, unless those tannins are managed carefully by the winemaker. Traditional long maceration times were an attempt to gain more colour than is typically found in wines made from the Nebbiolo grape but, as you can imagine, this long time frame of skin contact between grape skins and juice) also meant relatively tough tannic wines.
The aim now is to make wines that are structured but also silky. Wines with fruit flavour as well as impressive savouriness.
The only place in Italy that Nebbiolo is grown in the north west, most famously in Piemonte's great Barolo and Barbaresco appellations. These two DOCGs are relatively small areas, defined by extremely limited boundaries and, with a limited production of wine each year, the volumes of wine made tend to be tiny but highly priced.
A fun fact about Nebbiolo
Fun is a bit like beauty. It is often in the eye of the beholder. So it may tickle your funny bone to know that Nebbiolo has been so highly prized for so long that, in the repeated theft of a Nebbiolo vine or cutting was published by amputation.
The wines we can afford (without amputating a limb for the privilege)
Buy and explore affordable Nebbiolo here...
2017 Maretti Langhe Rosso RRP $28.99/ Special $26.99
2021 Mauro Molino Langhe Nebbiolo RRP $36.99 / Special $32.99
2018 Enzo Bartoli Langhe Nebbiolo RRP $40.99 / Special $36.99
2019 Cavallotto Langhe Nebbiolo RRP $63.99 / Special $58.99
2020 Giacomo Fenocchio Langhe Nebbiolo RRP $41.99 / Special $38.99
2020 Vietti Langhe Nebbiolo Perbacco RRP $51.99 / Special $47.99
2019 Produttori del Barbaresco RRP $63.99 / Special $58.99