Talking Timorasso
Why Piedmont bet on a virtually extinct grape, and how it’s paid off
When the ancient Greeks arrived on Italy’s southern shores, they named it Enotria, land of vines. Even today the numbers are impressive: 500 grape varieties still grow in Italy. But over the past century, a hundred have slipped away, lost forever after being abandoned by farmers who wanted larger yields or easier crops.
On the Colli Tortonesi wine road, land of Timorasso
Timorasso was one of the lucky few that escaped extinction. Like many such cases, it was thanks to the intervention of a single-minded believer. That was Walter Massa, who struck out on a lonely path in 1987 when he made his first 560 bottles of timorasso. In the time since, his production has grown to 75,000 bottles, and he’s been joined by 64 other wineries that collectively make more than 200,000 bottles. Timorasso has not only been resurrected; it’s reached star status, having rocketed to the firmament of Piedmont’s age-worthy wines. But unlike the regal reds Barolo and Barbaresco, timorasso is a white. As such, it joins a rare league of white wines that get better with age, an elite club that includes white Burgundy, white Hermitage, Riesling, and Champagne.
Timorasso’s origin story
Timorasso is native to an obscure corner of Piedmont formerly known for its peaches, apricots, and barbera grapes: the Colli Tortonesi, a stretch of hills (colli) flanking the town of Tortona, 60 miles to the east of Barolo and the Langhe hills. Timorasso has grown here since medieval times, but when Walter Massa joined the family farm in 1978, few timorasso vines remained. Their cash cow, like many neighboring farms, was peaches and barbera wine sold in bulk. But Massa was an ambitious 23-year-old enology graduate, part of a generation of Italian revolutionaries bent on transforming their traditional mixed-agriculture farms into serious winemaking enterprises. He saw a different path.
Walter Massa, the engine behind timorasso’s revival. All photos © Patricia Thomson
“There were people interested in having white wine in the bottle,” recalls the mop-haired winemaker in Italian, sitting in his home above the cantina, where he lives with his mother and sister. But he didn’t start with timorasso. Instead, “I invested decisively in cortese,” another local grape that shares territory with Gavi 20 miles to the south. But after several years, he realized “I didn’t have a feeling for cortese.” He needed an alternative.
Peers encouraged him to plant chardonnay, then all the rage, or try arneis, like others in the Langhe. But Massa dove into the history books and found that half the area had been planted with timorasso until the late 1800s, when phylloxera, a vine-eating louse, decimated everything. He also learned that the terrain’s suitability for white grapes had been noted centuries earlier. “In 1370 Pietro de’ Crescenzi wrote, ‘The jewel of viticulture in the Colli Tortonesi is the dry white wines. They have a splendid future,’ ” Massa recites with an ‘I told you so’ look.
““In Italy, timorasso is known by only 10 percent of wine consumers: i fighi, the cool people. In America, the super cool. The rest know pinot grigio.””
Despite that inherited wisdom, farmers wanted less troublesome, more productive grapes after suffering through phylloxera and two world wars. Timorasso is not easy to grow. The vines produce unevenly, the canopy is thick as a hedge, and ripe grapes detach too easily, leaving half your crop on the ground. “The contadino is always the same,” says Massa. “He wants the barn full of hay. Timorasso doesn’t guarantee a full cellar, so our territory repudiated it.” Farmers rebuilt by planting barbera, both because it’s a reliable workhorse grape and because the market demanded it. But many ripped out vines altogether, planting in their stead peaches, apricots, and pears, which could pull in three to four times the amount of money.
The early days
Walter Massa’s first timorasso was the 1987 vintage, sourced from 400 vines scattered amongst the family’s vineyards. That vinification behaved like any normal white, ready for bottling in April. But the following year, fermentation took the slow lane. When April rolled around, “it was still sweet! I had to wait until September to bottle,” he says. “That’s when I realized I had to go slow.”
Walter Massa’s single-vineyard Derthonas
Massa didn’t immediately grasp timorasso’s most distinctive feature: It improves with time in the cellar and time in the bottle. Taking a hint from that slow fermentation, he started to hold the wine back a year. “It took courage,” he says, especially since consumers expect white wines to be young and fresh.
Some years had to pass before Massa could compare vintages. But when that time arrived, it hit him: “I understood that the wine became more refined with age.” Not only that, its inherent minerality comes to the fore, its apricot and apple flavors intensify, and beguiling honey-nut aromas emerge thanks to the grape’s oxidative character.
When selling timorasso in those early years, Massa had to explain what it was: an ancient variety native to the Colli Tortonesi. “Many thought timorasso was a fantasy name. In the years of Ornellaia and Sassicaia, they thought ‘What a nice name, Timorasso. Where did you get it?’ ” He laughs. “It came from history.”
Thirty years on, Massa doesn’t have as much explaining to do, but he’s not satisfied yet. “In Italy, timorasso is known by only 10 percent of wine consumers: i fighi, the cool people. In America, the super cool. The rest know pinot grigio.”
The Barolistas arrive
That may soon change, thanks to the arrival of boldface names from Barolo, who have snapped up land like hot cakes. The land rush began in 2015 with the historic Borgogno winery buying vineyards near Massa’s, followed a year later by Vietti. “Now everybody’s going crazy,” says Luca Currado, Vietti’s fifth-generation winemaker. “Every day, you hear about a new winery buying land.” The list of marquee wineries now includes Barolo wineries Roagna, Pio Cesare, Voerzio, La Spinetta, the young Oddero cousins, plus Broglia from Gavi. All this star power will no doubt rub off on timorasso and increase supply as well. As a result of this new blood, timorasso vineyards are expanding by 10–15% each year, according to the Colli Tortonesi consortium.
Luca Currado, Vietti’s fifth-generation winemaker
The initial reason Vietti bought 17 acres of land was personal. “I’m so much in love with this wine,” Currado gushes. “This minerality, this sage in the nose; in the mouth, this long, long finish. The complexity is fantastic.” His wife, Elena, loves it too. “For 10 years, she was bugging me about buying a piece of land there. It wasn’t enough just to buy some bottles from Walter,” who is a good friend of the couple. “She kept insisting, ‘We can do something interesting.’ ”
Stakes at the ready for Vietti’s new timorasso vineyard in Monleale
Throwing their weight behind timorasso was also in keeping with Vietti’s history. Since their first label in 1873, the family winery has stayed true to Piedmont’s indigenous grapes, waving off trendy international grapes like chardonnay. This wasn’t the first time they’ve played a role in saving a grape from extinction. In the 1960s, Currado’s father famously rescued arneis, which has become the most widely planted white grape in the Langhe and Roero regions. “In 1967, we made 3,000 bottles. Now production is 13 million.” He’s happy for arneis’s success, but wants to avoid a similar overexpansion and victim-of-its-own-success scenario for timorasso.
Others do too. That’s why winemakers have gotten behind the flag of Derthona, which is timorasso by another name.
Derthona defined
Derthona is the ancient Roman name for Tortona, which was once an important settlement on the Via Postumia. Seeking an identity that was tied to the land rather than a grape, winemakers collectively agreed to name the wine Derthona in 2000. That was a time when Massa was coaching a group of producers on best vinification practices for this difficult grape. “We chose ‘Derthona’ because it’s a good territorial name,” says Elisa Semino, La Colombera winemaker and consortium VP.
An old vineyard in timorasso country
In sum, the grape is timorasso, the DOC (denominazione di origine controllata) is Colli Tortonesi, and Derthona is the name of timorasso wine that comes from this territory.
Winemakers in the consortium set the ground rules, and they intend to prevent overexpansion before it’s too late. “We don’t want to make another arneis,” says Currado. “The reason why I came onboard the Derthona project was because the idea was to plant only 200 to 250 hectares maximum of timorasso, and then block the production. Why? We don’t want to make a big-consumption wine. The idea is to make a niche wine, like Hermitage Blanc.”
Bottles labeled Derthona follow a style developed by Walter Massa: cold maceration with stems in concrete tanks, fermentation in stainless steel with native yeasts and no added sulfites, then an extended period on the fine lees with battonage, or stirring of the dead yeast. Massa’s extra year in the cellar before release has also been officially adopted. In short, there’s no oak that gets in the way, there’s a creamy richness from the battonage, and there’s an emphasis on bringing out distinctions in terroir.
Timorasso country in southeast Piedmont
And what a territory it is. “When I went there the first time,” says Corrado, “I immediately fell in love, because it was like seeing the Langhe in the 1970s: some vineyards, peaches, fields, apple trees, forest. Right now if you come to the Langhe, there’s vineyard, vineyard, vineyard. It’s monocultural” as opposed to biodiverse. “It’s so much easier to cultivate grapes in a region that’s not only vineyards — for disease and many other things,” since adjacent vineyards without buffer zones can spread viruses too easily. “It’s like when you take your kid to daycare and they all get sick.”
Being a blank slate, timorasso is still undergoing wild experiments in style, with winemakers trying everything from sparklers to orange wines. If that piques your interest, you’ll have to travel to Tortona to try them out. The only timorasso exported to the U.S. is their flagship, Derthona. I recommend that if you do find Derthona in your shop, buy several bottles, uncork one immediately, then put the others away for at least two years. Massa recommends seven years to reach peak, but notes a good vintage can live on quite nicely for another decade after that. Let’s just say, the longer you wait, the better. Then you’ll truly see what timorasso is all about.
