Claudio Mariotto Bricco San Michele Derthona Timorasso 2024

Claudio Mariotto Bricco San Michele Derthona Timorasso 2024

Timorasso is a thin-skinned, trouble-maker white grape native to the south-eastern corner of Piedmont near Alessandria known as Colli Tortonesi (the hills of Tortona). Its bunches ripen unevenly and are fragile, easily detaching from the vine and can suffer from failures at flowering. It has a dense canopy that needs serious taming and a tendency to over produce, requiring specific growing sites. In other words, growing Timorasso is a lot of work with plenty of risk; no wonder extinction was on the cards by the 1980s. 

During the Timorasso revival (from near extinction) in the 90’s, 4th generation farmer Claudio took over his family’s lands, began selecting the best clones from their vineyards and giving the best sites over to this fickle grape variety. As one of the few ‘saviour’ producers, Claudio has some of the best experience with Timorasso that there is.

Along with Walter Massa, Claudio defines the variety’s modern style: native yeast spontaneous ferments, very slow and gentle pressing, stainless steel ageing on fine lees for a year with light battonage + further bottle age before release. Oak is never used.

From the Bricco San Michele Cru, 10ha on an East - South-East facing hillside in Vho, with limestone and clay subsoils. Soft pressing, spontaneous fermentation, 12 months on fine lees in stainless steel, 12 months in bottles before releases. No malo.

There’s slightly more aromatic exoticism here, with golden delicious apple, fresh honey and somewhat of a kumquat like lift, but it’s the underlying stony, almost concrete, slate like aromatic that’s so engaging and keeps everything in check. That energy continues on the palate, briskly waving under a mouthful of fleshy, pulpy fruit led by dried mandarin, lime zest and again slate. Finishing fresh and linear this is in the handful of the great bottlings of Timorasso we’ve seen over the past 18 months.