Brovia was founded in Castiglione Falletto in 1863 by Giacinto Brovia and wine was produced continuously until the depradations of Phylloxera and two World Wars curtailed activity. Giacinto and Raffaele restarted operations in 1953. Today the business is managed by Giacinto's daughters (Cristina and Elena) and Elena's husband Alex Sánchez.
The estate farms 19.2 ha across the Langhe with 55% of the land devoted to Barolo, 25% to Dolcetto, 10% to Barbera, and 10% to Arneis, Nebbiolo d'Alba, and Freisa. The estate produces five Barolo wines (four cru and a Normale constructed from the youngest vines in the cru vineyards). The sources for the Barolo fruit are shown in the chart below.
In terms of vineyard practices, the estate is farmed organically (no certification) and yield is carefully managed through pruning and cluster-thinning. Soils are analyzed every two years to ensure imbalances have not crept in.
Barolo wines are vinified classically with fermentation periods of 30+ days and aging of at least years in 30 hL Slavonian and French oak barrels. After bottling (sans filtration), the wine spends 18 - 24 months in bottle prior to release on the market.
Now back to Unio.
The 2014 harvest was difficult for Barolo producers (as I related in my post on the topic). In recounting Brovia's response, I reported that they had created Unio as a blend of their 5 Barolo wines. I had misheard Alex, but as I researched the topic further, I realized that there was a total lack of clarity as to exactly what are the components of Unio.
There are some areas of certainty:
- Growing conditions were terrible
- The Suzuki fly exacerbated an already bad situation
- The family tasted through all of their Barolo lots and decided to sell off 50% of the wine in bulk and make a single wine -- Unio -- from the wines held back.
According to Manuel Burgi, a fellow Barolo lover and attendee at La Festa del Barolo, two crus are included in Unio and he cites as proof a conversation he had with Alex at La Festa and a Producer Comment from Antoni Galloni's Vinous. According to the Commentary, "The 2014 is a blend of two parcels but the Brovia's prefer not to disclose which two in order not to penalize the image of the other two vineyards for the future."
Ross Morrison, another Barolo lover, contributed that during his visit to Brovia, he was told that Unio was a blend of three crus.
And the hunt was on. I checked on Cellar Tracker and found three users with differing descriptions of the wine components. One of these tasters stated that it was a blend of 4 crus.
Wine Library stated that the wine was made from selected parcels in two cru vineyards and a small amount of their Normale Barolo. This does not compute as the Normale is drawn from the four cru vineyards.
Manuel, on further research, turned up a piece by Rosenthal Wine Merchants (Brovia's distributor) which stipulated that the wine was made with fruit drawn from the lower sections of the Brea vineyard plus portions from two other crus (Manuel was able to subsequently confirm this with Elena Brovia.).
So that was one question answered. The remaining question was which of the crus was left out of the blend. As I look at the chart above, I see that Villero has the most clay of the soils and, as such, would be the most subject to water retention. This observation is borne out by a statement on baroli.it: "The Villero ... soil, characterized by very low permeability, retains a lot of water, allowing the grapes to maintain a high level of quality even in the driest seasons... "
My thought is that this feature became a bug in 2014, causing the Villero wines to be very dilute and thus kept out of the blend.
©Wine -- Mise en abyme
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