For generations stretching back as far as anyone can remember, people in Piedmont nearly always preferred red wine over white when they sat down at the dinner table. That’s due in part to the fact that Piedmont is most famous for its red wines like made from grapes like Nebbiolo, Barbera, and Dolcetto. Even today, when the older generation of Piedmont sits down to eat seafood, folks still like red wine with their dinner.
But as the interest in Piedmont wines started to grow across the world in the last decades of the 20th century, a small group of Piedmontese winemakers began to become more excited about growing white grapes. They recognized that their land and the soils in their vineyards were great for reds but also ideal for the production of world-class whites.
At the time, they started investing more and more in the one white grape they were known for, Cortese (and the wines of Gavi). And they replanted a handful of traditional white grapes like Arneis, Anascetta (or Nascetta), and Favorita (Vermentino). These historic grape varieties produced easy-to-drink, fresh, delicious but mostly one- and two-dimensional wines that offered an alternative to the region’s great reds.
But it was thanks to visionary growers in the Colli Tortonesi in Tortona commune (in Alessandria province) that the ancient Timorasso grape has enjoyed a genuine renaissance.
They realized that their limestone- and clay-rich soils, identical to those found in the Barolo appellation, could also produce complex, nuanced white wines with depth and substance. They just needed a grape variety that could rise to the occasion and Timorasso was the one for the job!
Today, Timorasso has become the number-one Piedmontese white grape among the international wine “hipster” crowd. That’s because it’s a grape that many, like the great Italian ampelographer Ian D’Agata, have said makes for an “intellectual wine.”
In his landmark “Native Wine Grapes of Italy” (published in 2014 by the University of California Press), he writes that Timorasso’s “intensely mineral and herbal aromas and flavors” have produced some of “Italy’s most unique [and] interesting wines.”
According to D’Agata, legend has it that even Leonardo da Vinci drank and paired Timorasso with a favorite dish during his years in nearby Lombardy.
Most wine industry observers agree that Timorasso rightly stands side-by-side with the great white grapes of the world thanks to the often austere and age-worthy wines it produces.
The Borgogno Colli Tortonesi Timorasso is widely considered to be one of the greatest examples of this wine. The winery calls its “Derthona,” after the ancient name of Tortona.
