(Source: Giovanni Graziadei)
In the world of wine, many grape varieties contend for wine drinkers' hearts. Each variety has its own appeal: some scream immediate pleasure with generous, plump, fruity notes, while others are, well, a bit harder to get. Nebbiolo is definitely one of the latter.
Often compared to Pinot Noir for delivering light-coloured wines thanks to its thin skins, and prized for its ability to "speak" of its terroir, this grape can become the obsession of wine lovers precisely because of its grumpy character. It is not a crowd-pleaser: racy tannins, high acidity, medium to high alcohol, and it often needs time and patience for all its elements to reach balance. But if you push past the grumpiness and get to know its profile, Nebbiolo will reward you, opening up to deliver superb complexity, nuance, balance and finesse. It is, after all, the grape variety behind Barolo, often called the wine of kings and the king of wines. It is certainly an obsession of mine, though I admit I am a very biased Piedmontese.
That obsession is what pulled me north to a tiny village right against the border with Valle d'Aosta, on the road that runs from Turin towards Mont Blanc. I had come to understand what is brewing in one of Italy's smallest appellation, just around 20 hectares in total. Nothing quite prepared me for the sight as I got close: vineyards scattered across the mountainside in the tiniest slivers imaginable, some barely wider than a footpath, wedged between outcrops of rock and climbing higher up the slope than seemed reasonable. I was lucky with the weather, a properly clear day, the sky a hard pale blue, and the kind of brisk mountain air that gets into your coat the moment you step out of the car. As I came into Carema, I found the vines still trained in their pergola style, clinging to slivers of land that generations of farmers had clawed back from the mountain through hard work building terraces and dry walls. Growing and maintaining vines in such a challenging environment and setting has often been referred to as "heroic winemaking."
Where Carema Sits
Carema sits at the northern tip of Piedmont, in North-West Italy, right where the region gives way to the Aosta Valley. Geographically, it sits some distance from the core cluster of northern Nebbiolo appellations, Gattinara, Ghemme, Boca, Bramaterra and Lessona, that together make up what is generally known as Alto Piemonte. And yet Carema is usually mentioned in the same breath as those wines, as part of a broader story of Piedmontese Nebbiolo beyond Barolo and Barbaresco. The connection is really about style rather than geography: like the Alto Piemonte wines, Carema comes from cooler, harder sites at altitude, and shares the same instinct to trade the power of Barolo for something more vertical, fresh and mineral. So while Carema stands as its own outpost, tucked into the mouth of the Aosta Valley, it belongs, in spirit, to that same northern conversation.
Stone and Sunlight
The vines here are trained on the pergola system, held up by stone pillars the locals call topie. Carema's history runs deep and is closely tied to the story of quality winemaking in Italy more broadly. When the national DOC system rolled out in 1964, Carema was among the very first zones to be regulated under it, in 1967, though records of winemaking here reach back to the 16th century. The area was also written up at length in Vino al Vino in 1969, by Mario Soldati arguably the father of modern Italian wine journalism, who found in these wines an unmistakable character of "stone and sunlight".
(Source: Giovanni Graziadei)
What was here at the time, and is still here today, are the two historic producers: Produttori di Carema and Ferrando. The first is a cooperative, its grapes supplied by dozens of members, many of whom farm only a handful of square metres of vine, often well under a hectare each. Cooperatives in the Italian winemaking landscape often do not enjoy a great reputation, but Produttori di Carema is one of the few to have kept a consistent focus on quality. Any serious Nebbiolo drinker will know another Produttori by comparison, the one in Barbaresco. Different scale, different landscape, but the same two virtues: a reference point for the category, and real value for money.
(Source: Giovanni Graziadei)
Ferrando is what the French would call a négociant manipulant. Its history is woven into that of the wider Canavese region, where it has been one of its most notable winemakers and wine traders since the late 19th century. The house makes a range of wines, but its founding vision was to build proper winemaking facilities in Carema, and the village's wines became the crown of its portfolio. Ferrando was recently acquired by the American wine merchant Neal Rosenthal, whose long-standing passion for these singular wines had already made the Ferrando labels known in the US market, and whose acquisition came with a clear intent to keep the winery running in continuity with the Ferrando family's work.
If you have ever tried to make sense of Italian wine labelling, you will know we have a real talent for making things unnecessarily confusing, and Carema does not break the streak. Both historic producers bottle an etichetta bianca (white label) and an etichetta nera (black label). At Produttori di Carema, white is the premium bottling, a Riserva made by selecting the best barrels and giving them extra time in wood beyond what the black label gets. At Ferrando, someone apparently flipped the coin the other way: black is the more premium wine, made only in excellent vintages by blending wines from their finest parcels.
Regardless of the colour and the name on the label, all these bottles represent excellent value, and I highly encourage you to pull the cork if you come across any of these: you will not be disappointed.
A New Wave, One Steep Path at a Time
This January, I came to see Sorpasso, one of the small new wineries that have sprung up in Carema over the past decade or so. Martina, who runs the estate with her husband Vittorio, meets me and we walk up through the vineyards. The cold sharpens everything: the stone, the bare vines, the silence of a mountain village in winter. A steep sentiero takes us past plots so small and scattered that it is hard to believe they belong to a single producer. The microclimate shifts from parcel to parcel even within this tiny area, with differences in exposure and a nearby creek making themselves felt, and the contrast with vineyards I have visited elsewhere, where a single cru can run to several hectares, is stark.
Martina explains the real purpose of the topie, the stone pillars. It would be simpler, and cheaper, to build them slimmer, but their unusual thickness is deliberate: they act as natural temperature regulators, trapping heat through the day and releasing it at night, a buffer that matters a great deal at this altitude and in this climate.
Inside, in facilities that are part of the family home, small stainless steel tanks stand ready, reflecting a philosophy of vinifying each tiny parcel separately wherever possible. In the cellar, the preference is for tonneaux, used across many vintages to keep the wood's imprint gentle. It is the kind of setup people like to call "garage wine," a term I have never much liked, since it flirts with an idea of casualness that does not match what is actually happening here. Growing grapes on this terrain, with a variety this unwilling to be tamed, takes nothing but intention. The wines bear that out.
In the tasting room, empty bottles of Carema from a multitude of vintages and producers line the shelves, always a good sign when winemakers are actively tasting each other's work and opening their own archives besides. Martina tells me their winemaking journey began in 2012; she and Vittorio are local, and naturally drawn to a way of living that keeps them rooted here. Too many people have left Carema for careers in bigger cities, and the owners of these tiny plots increasingly struggle to find anyone with the energy and skill to keep working them. The parcels are simply too small to make a living from alone, so many of today's winemakers hold down other jobs and make wine here to keep the heritage alive. In doing so, they are quietly writing a new chapter. Carema is now home to a small wave of young, artisan producers, Sorpasso, Monte Maletto, Muraje, Chiussuma, as far as I know, shaking things up and making some genuinely exciting wine along the way.
Two Wines, Seven Vintages Apart
Sorpasso, Carema 2023. The grapes are pressed and left to ferment spontaneously without temperature control, then macerated for forty days, most of which with submerged cap. The wine is matured in used tonneaux, unfiltered and unclarified.
Light in colour, with beautiful translucent ruby. The nose is wonderfully open, expressive and focused, led by dried rose and other florals, with an intriguing minty, piny juniper edge underneath that keeps pulling you back for another sniff. The palate has real tension between bright acidity and tannins that are gently grippy yet fresh. A gorgeous, precise little wine, complex without carrying too much weight, and incredibly easy to drink.
Muraje, Carema 2016. I found this one a couple of months later, spotted on a wine list, and could not resist: an early vintage from a producer belonging to that same new wave, and a lovely chance to see where these wines land after some real time in bottle. It is not labelled Carema DOC.
The back label reveals it was made before Muraje had its own facility in the village, so it was vinified at Le Piane instead, in the first years when the two houses were in conversation and Muraje used Le Piane's cellar for part of its production. (Piemonte geeks will know Le Piane as a serious name in Boca, another Nebbiolo-based wine from Alto Piemonte.) The wine is made with spontaneous fermentation in a concrete tank and an unusually long maceration stretching into December, then aged for many months in exhausted tonneaux and barrique, all without filtration. More dense in colour, with a slight cloudiness, the 2016 greets you with a beautifully vinous nose: ten years in, the fruit has shifted from bright to dried red fruit, layered with lovely notes of menthol and tobacco. The palate retains fresh acidity, a joy to trace across vintages, though here the tannins have softened into something silkier with age, and the wine leans more on fruit than on the grippy structure you would expect from Nebbiolo. Thoroughly delicious, and with possibly another five years to peak.
Final Thoughts
Piedmont is often regarded as a classic region: Barolo and Barbaresco sitting comfortably on their reputations, the map more or less drawn. This is far from the truth. The Langhe itself has gone through a tremendous amount of change, from the now passé Modernist versus Traditionalist debates to an evolving array of new producers, and some notable acquisitions from outsiders along the way. The quality of Langhe wines has increased tremendously, and so, inevitably, have the prices.
Carema is a good reminder that although the region is a classic, under that quiet, almost understated surface there is a genuinely dynamic scene quietly rewriting what these mountains can do. These expressions of Nebbiolo are bright and joyful, in a way more approachable but still delivering plenty of the complexity that draws wine lovers to this variety. Add the price point into the equation and the picture gets even more exciting.
If you are a Nebbiolo lover, it is heartwarming to know there is still so much left to explore. This is a living, evolving scene, where new producers and lesser known areas can still satisfy our craving for these wonderfully cerebral wines.
