Cantina D'Arcy Langhe Nebbiolo 2023

Cantina D'Arcy is the project of Tom Myers, a New Zealander working out of Barolo and one of the most exciting young Piemontese arrivals to land on our shelves in a long time. I got the chance to taste these with our rep last week and was completely blown away, wines that for me represent a direction in Nebbiolo more exciting than traditional Barolo, elegant and floral with silky, flowing lines that evoke the best of what I love about ethereal Burgundy through a Piedmontese lens. Tom arrived in Piemonte after a CV that reads like a who's who of the world's great growers, with stints at Comte Armand, Benjamin Leroux, Giuseppe Rinaldi, Marquis d'Angerville and Dr Loosen before turning up at Place of Changing Winds in 2015 for the winter pruning. The region is famously cautious about outsiders, but with a vigneron's language and an introduction via the Rinaldi family he eventually leased a single hectare of mostly old vines in the Preda Cru, nestled between the famous sites of Cannubi and Vignane at the end of the Bussia Valley. The big headline this year is that Tom has decided to remove his single cru Barolo from the DOCG rather than meet its 18 months of mandatory wood ageing, feeling it would compromise the vibrancy and purity of his 2022. It is the quality of what is in the bottle that matters to Tom, not what is written on it, and we couldn't agree with him more. - Pete L