Translation missing: en.2022 Cascina delle Rose Barbaresco Release + Chateau Lafitte - An incredible new discovery from Jurançon + Piedmont Tasting - Saturday 23rd of May 3-6PM: 2022 Cascina delle Rose Barbaresco Release + Chateau Lafitte - An incredible new discovery from Jurançon + Piedmont Tasting - Saturday 23rd of May 3-6PM
Cascina delle Rose
Cascina delle Rose are a small, family-run estate making some of the most quietly brilliant wines in Barbaresco, a name held in serious regard back home in Italy but still flying largely under the radar out here. The estate goes back to the years just after the Second World War, when Giovanna's grandparents fell for an old house tucked into the rolling, fog-draped hills below the Alps, with the first wines bottled in the mid 1950s. Giovanna moved up to the property for good in 1974 to carry on the family farm, and in 2015 she handed the reins to her two sons, Riccardo and Davide, who run the estate today. They were also one of the very first growers in the Langhe to certify organic, which tells you plenty about the way this family thinks.
The estate sits right at the top of the Rio Sordo cru in the heart of the UNESCO-listed Barbaresco hills, six hectares planted to Dolcetto, Barbera and Nebbiolo. The soils here are of marine origin, calcareous grey and blue marl shot through with sand and silt and fed by underground springs, the kind of cool, water-holding site that really earns its keep in a dry year and gives these wines their hallmark elegance and lift. Farming is organic throughout, with cover crops and only minimal copper and sulphur, all in service of keeping the biodiversity of the valley intact. They are also one of just three growers with a holding in the tiny Tre Stelle cru, the highest section of Rio Sordo, only consecrated in 2006.
In the cellar the approach is unashamedly traditional. Fermentations start spontaneously in stainless steel, the Barbarescos then macerate for a long 30 to 35 days on skins before heading to old 2000L Slovenian botti for around 21 to 23 months, while the Dolcetto and Langhe Nebbiolo stay in steel to keep all their freshness. No small oak ever touches the Nebbiolo and nothing is added the whole way through beyond a touch of sulphur at bottling. 2022 was a genuinely tough vintage in the Langhe, a hot and very dry year that pushed plenty of vineyards into real water stress, but careful work in the vineyard (late green-harvesting, attentive canopy management and even dusting the bunches with clay to keep off sunburn) together with the valley's spring water and water-holding soils carried the fruit through in good shape. The wines that came out the other side are built on bright raspberry and cherry fruit, green herbs and spice, with juicy, supple tannins and the natural acidity that gives them their nerve.
We've just landed the new release and it's a proper run through the estate. The '24 'Dolcetto d'Alba' and the '24 'Langhe Nebbiolo' come off the younger vines and lower parcels, raised in steel and ready to enjoy now, a well-priced and very easy way into the estate (the Langhe Nebbiolo in particular drinks like a baby Barbaresco). From there we move into the 2022 Barbarescos. The '22 'Tre Stelle' comes off that prized slope facing south-southwest at 250 to 310 metres (also available in magnum), while the '22 'Rio Sordo' sits a touch higher at 310 metres facing southwest, both perfumed, classic and built for the long haul. The '22 'Marcorino' is the exciting one to watch, a 90 year-old plot over in neighbouring Neive that happens to be the smallest cru in all of Barbaresco, share-farmed with neighbour Bruno Rocca, and this is only the second vintage the estate has released from it (also available in magnum). Finally, for something a bit special, we have a single bottle of the '13 'Tre Stelle', patiently cellared all this time and one of the last wines Giovanna made before handing over, a rare window back into the estate's older style. Barbaresco of this quality very rarely comes in at this kind of money and there's only a small amount of each to go around.
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Chateau Lafitte
Chateau Lafitte sit in the village of Monein in the foothills of the Pyrenees, deep in Jurançon, one of the most overlooked corners of south-west France. Jurançon is a name most people only know for sweet wines, if they know it at all, but a younger generation of growers has been quietly turning it into one of the country's most interesting sources of dry white, and Antoine Arraou is right at the front of that push. The focus here is firmly on dry, food-friendly wines alongside a handful of more experimental cuvées, a long way from the region's old reputation.
The five hectares are farmed biodynamically and certified Demeter, run as a proper mixed farm rather than just a vineyard, with fruit trees, grains, grazing sheep and beehives all worked in around the vines. The sites are steep and south-facing, catching plenty of Atlantic weather and big swings between day and night temperatures, which is exactly what keeps the local Manseng grapes fresh and tense even as they ripen fully. In the cellar Antoine works by gravity and matches the vessel to the parcel, so you'll find amphorae, concrete eggs and large old oak all in play, and he's happy to step outside the appellation rules under the Vin de France banner to do skin contact, cofermentation and very low sulphur winemaking. The wines stay honest to where they come from without ever tasting worked.
The '24 '1L Blanc' is the easygoing example of what the estate does best. It's a full litre of Petit and Gros Manseng raised in concrete egg, all citrus and white peach with a bright, juicy finish, made for sharing rather than fussing over. The '23 '1L Blouge' is their fun bistro red, another litre, a half-and-half blend of the local red grape Fer Servadou and Gros Manseng that lands somewhere between a white and a light red (the name is just blanc and rouge run together), raised in amphora with nothing added and full of wild strawberry and redcurrant, best served with a good chill. Stepping up, the '24 'Sec' is the serious dry Jurançon, late-picked Manseng aged in large neutral barrels for texture, broad and generous but drawn tight by a firm, saline mineral line. Finally, the '22 'Argile' is the flagship, 100% Petit Manseng fermented and aged for two years in terracotta amphora, a denser, more savoury and textural take on the grape that's all quince, citrus peel and wild herbs over a long, salty finish (it comes in a 500ml bottle). These are seriously exceptional wines and exactly the kind of wines we get excited back. Well made, thoughtful and honest winemaking that reinvigorates the mind.
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Piedmont Tasting
Saturday 23rd
3pm-6pm
Join us this Saturday as we taste through a fantastic seven-wine flight that takes in the breadth of Piedmont, from the Cortese of Gavi in the west all the way through to Barbaresco.
Piedmont sits in the foothills of the Alps in Italy's northwest corner and is one of the great red wine regions on earth, home to Nebbiolo and the legendary towns of Barolo and Barbaresco where the cru system has been steadily built up over generations, with individual vineyards now carrying a status that increasingly mirrors the Grand Crus of Burgundy. The character of these wines shifts noticeably from one vineyard to the next even though the grape and the vinification are often near-identical, which is exactly the point and a big part of why Nebbiolo continues to draw obsessives in the way it does.
But Piedmont is far broader than its red wine reputation suggests. Cortese in Gavi produces some of Italy's most pristine, mineral-driven whites and Timorasso, an indigenous white that nearly went extinct in the post-war years and has been brought back by a small group of growers in the Colli Tortonesi, is now producing some of the most exciting and age-worthy whites coming out of the country. Add in the indigenous Langhe varieties living slightly in Nebbiolo's shadow (Dolcetto, Freisa, Barbera, all worth every bit of attention), the Langhe-level declassified Nebbiolos that punch well above their price point, and the Nebbiolo rosatos coming out of the region, and you start to get a sense of how much ground there is to cover here. For a full breakdown of the sub-regions and varieties, have a look at our guidebook to Piedmont.
The seven wines we'll be pouring walk the whole region west to east and light to heavy:
Nicola Bergaglio 'Minaia' Gavi 2024
La Colombera Derthona Timorasso 2024
Domenico Clerico 'Visadi' Langhe Dolcetto 2024
Luigi Oddero Langhe Nebbiolo 2022
Ca' del Baio 'Autinbej' Barbaresco 2022
This is a rare chance to taste a properly representative cross-section of one of the world's great wine regions in a single sitting. See you there!