Shipping included on 3 bottles or more

I was lucky enough to know Matteo Correggia a little. He visited PRIMA once, way back in the early 1990s when I had first started. He was, then, traveling with the so-called ‘Barolo Boys,’ and he was the only one of them not actually from Barolo. He was from the rolling, sandy hills of Roero, on the other side of the River Tanaro from Barbaresco, miles from where his close friends and mentors Elio Altare and Roberto Voerzio lived and worked. But these latter two revolutionaries looked on Matteo as a peer and respected his vision to make the name Roero worthy of the same veneration as Barolo or Barbaresco. And he was committed to doing it without sacrificing what made Roero special, i.e. simply imitating the way the wines were made elsewhere. Matteo became the first in Roero to bottle a single-vineyard Nebbiolo and export it, and his wines were garnering Barolo-like attention from the press even when most people had never heard of the district, even before it was a DOCG. That first single-source wine is the one you have in your hands today, the 'Ròche d'Ampsèj.' 

Matteo was well on his way to making this wine a household name when, in 2001, his life was tragically cut short in tractor accident in one of his vineyards, leaving behind a grieving wife Ornella and a small son Giovanni. The story could have ended there. But it didn’t. Ornella, being Piemontese herself, was as stubborn as it comes and flatly refused to give up. With the support of Matteo’s broad spectrum of friends in the business, she picked right up where Matteo left off and, now with Giovanni in the fold as well, Matteo Correggia’s legacy truly lives on. In addition to the very fine Correggia Roero Arneis (Matteo was one of the earliest promoters of dry Arneis from the Roero), the crown jewel in the Correggia tiara is the 5000-bottle production of Roero Riserva, still made from the same steep, sandy slope as always. It’s the sand in Roero that makes it special, creating a ‘finer’ sort of Nebbiolo with a more elegant, subtle mouthfeel than the wines grown on the more austere soils of Barolo. It was important for Correggia to lean in to that fineness and not try to make a bigger scale wine and that’s what we get here in this eight-year old, perfectly-drinking Roero.

Half the wine was macerated for only 10 days in stainless steel vats to preserve its fruit and freshness while the other half underwent a much longer, almost two month, maceration in 6 HL (about 158 gallon) casks. The wine was subsequently aged for over 14 months and rested in bottle for an additional two years before being released. This will be one of the most lovely, seductive wines you taste this year. It marries the native power of Nebbiolo with the true subtlety that can be expressed through older vines grown in sand. The aromatics and forward, complex and intriguing with smoky baking spices, camphor and Luxardo cherry vying for your attention. This wine is the true validation of Matteo’s vision as now interpreted by the keepers of that light. Drink now!

Vinous Media, 94 points: The 2108 Roero Riserva is powerful, complex and beguiling. Macerated cherry, cinnamon, orange peel, cedar and dried flowers all open over time. Deep and pliant, with terrific depth and polished tannins, the 2018 Roche d’Ampsej is an absolute delight. Drink it over the next decade or so.