2021 Pio Cesare Nebbiolo Langhe

Nebbiolo Langhe is made from the same grape as the famous wines Barolo and Barbaresco, the Nebbiolo. Nebbiolo gives wines like these a distinguished and grand character, but a little lighter in structure than the great wines themselves. They are the product of the strict selection for the top wines, supplemented with grapes from outside the Barolo and Barbaresco. A perfect mix for a wine that has character, but is also supple enough to enjoy young. The grapes are harvested a few days earlier than those for the Barolo and Barbaresco. The fermentation on the skins takes about 12 to 13 days. This produces a wine that is a lighter version of the great wines, but that still has a clear personality, with the same character of the Nebbiolo, but in a more accessible form, a little easier to approach. Delicious wine, with a lot of finesse.

The Nebbiolo of Pio Cesare is wonderfully smoky and spicy in the aroma, with a hint of cherry fruit, flowers, vanilla, laurel, earthy, a soft attack, at the same time powerful, a real personality, nicely dry, cherries, vanilla, cream, good tannins and fresh acids after. Excellent with characterful main courses, based on meat, with salads, cold starters, lightly matured cheeses.

The Pio Cesare house is one of the classic producers of the region. Based in Alba, the 'wine capital' of this region, and founded in 1881 by Cesare Pio. His name has been retained in reverse order as the name of this trading house and family business. It is still in family hands, because at the head is Pio Boffa, the great-grandson of the founder. He continues the work of the family in an excellent way, and in the meantime is also responsible for a number of modernizations and changes in this beautiful, traditional company. Pio Cesare has always been a trading house, which obtained the grapes on contract from winegrowers in the region. This is also a common practice in this region, which has many small winegrowers with small plots of vineyard, who are always ready to sell their grapes to one of the trading houses. In this respect, the region is a bit like Burgundy, with all those different vineyards, each with its own name, divided into small vineyard plots, each owned by a different winegrower.

Pio Boffa decided that it was good for the quality of the wines to also own vineyards. Over the years he has bought a number of vineyards, mainly in the famous areas of Barolo and Barbaresco. The vineyard property now covers 45 hectares, and produces some of the house's finest wines, with a few special vineyard cuvées as top performers. These are only released in good years.

The necessary changes have also been made in the winemaking. A very restrained vinification has been chosen, in which the wine is left alone as much as possible, so with as few interventions as possible. Each wine receives the individual treatment that best suits that particular wine, with a shorter or longer fermentation on the skins, followed or not by a classic maturation on Slavonian oak, the traditional wood of the region. It produces wines with a classic finesse, balanced and complex, worthy representatives of this special wine region.