Togliana. Carema Riserva

Achille Milanesio is Cantina Togliana
Carema DOC
Grape: Nebbiolo (known locally as Picotendro)

2017
Rose, vanilla flowers, pure bramble and plum aromas that morph neatly into the finest and most finely poised palate, where salted chocolate-orange flavours weave their way through textured, floral fruit.  13.5%

2018
Bramble and orange peel, blueberry and rose, silky tannins. A wine with sublime freshness and clarity. 13.5%

Achille Milanesio, Carema producer page

Achille makes a single barrel of Carema Riserva each year.  It is from a site, or Cru called ‘Runc’.  The Picotendro (Nebbiolo) vines are on a steeply terraced south-facing slope.  The vines are between 20 and 30 years old and are masal* selections.  The training is on a particular high pergola, known locally as ‘Topia’.  It is a system that requires exhaustive work, no tractors, everything is manual, this is truly heroic viticulture.
Prior to the harvest, Achille makes a pied de cuve* in the vineyard, to select unadulterated, strong, native yeasts.  The grapes are hand-picked by the family, crushed, and tipped into a steel tank, where the pied de cuve awaits them.  The fermentation lasts just over 2 weeks, the wine then spends another month with the skins submerged, before being racked into a clean steel tank where it goes through malolactic conversion*.  The wine is aged in a used French tonneaux* for a year before it is bottled without filtration.

The 2018 saw a change of branding: new label and the emergence of Cantina Togliana