"There is gold in them thar hills." This was the sound reverberating around the Langhe hills in the decade of the 2010s. And it was emanating from the lips of Langhe producers. And they were not talking about the Langhe hills. Rather, they were talking about the Tortonesi hills. And the gold was white: Timorasso white.
I have previously catalogued the Langhe entrants into the Colli Tortonesi Timorasso space and provided the rationale behind the surge. In this post I detail one of the newest entrants: Monlià, a partnership between the La Morra entities Oddero and Osteria More e Macine.
The Partners
International Wine Report describes Oddero thusly:
Nestled in the Langhe hills, Oddero brings a long tradition of family winemaking ... Today the legacy of Giacomo Oddero lives on through his daughter Mariacristina, who entered the family business near the end of the 1990s, and grandchildren Isabella and Pietro.
Oddero dedicates its full attention to the winemaking process, blending ancient wisdom and modern production techniques with patience and tenacity, from the pruning of the vines to the pressing of the grapes, up to the aging of selected vintages. The vines grow in some of the best and sunniest sites (known as sôri) on the hills in the Barolo and Barbaresco zones and beyond.
Tom Hyland, writing in Forbes, describes More e Macine as offering "a wide variety of traditional plates, with extremely fair pricing, along with an outstanding wine selection, with several selections by the glass. Piemontegirl concurs: "Ito and his crew will serve you good food and wine in a fantastic atmosphere. If you look around, it is almost guaranteed one of the winemakers in the area will sit at one of the tables, drinking coffee or wine, chatting with their friends."
Isabella and Pietro manage the Oddero interests in this project.
The Project
The project was jump-started in an Autumn 2017 mealtime discussion at the tavern. As has been the case for most of the new entrants into this market, the advice and counsel of Walter Massa was sought out during the formative stages of the project.
The foundation of the effort was the purchase of a 1.45 ha eastern-facing plot in Monleale. This 450m-elevation site has very fine calcareous clay soil with some limestone presence.
The freshly planted vineyard would not yield fruit for some time but the team wanted to begin honing its processes and practices and so bought fruit for an initial vintage.
Monlià 2019 Derthona Colli Tortonesi Timorasso
As has been the case for a number of the new entrants, Monlià did not adhere to the traditional Timorasso production process. Rather, it blended Oddero winemaking practices with traditional methods to come up with the final product.
The grapes were pressed and then racked off the gross lees. Fermentation was 30% in stainless steel tanks and 70% in 2500 l Austrian oak barrels. There was no malolactic fermentation. The wines remained on lees — with batonnage — for one year and were blended one month prior to bottling.
The nose is aromatic, flavorful, and full of promise with notes of sweet white fruit, honeycomb, sea spray, herbs, and pepper. Complexity and elegance. The wine still has a ways to go in order to deliver the promise of the nose on the palate. Broad-based and relatively approachable. Lime skin with a pepper spice finish. Less structure, salinity, and minerality than some of the wines I have encountered to date. It will be interesting to follow its development path.
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