Podere Ruggeri Corsini, Barolo


California and Washington DC regional sales only

corsini_label

Country & RegionItaly, Piedmont
Appellation(s)Barolo, Langhe, Barbera
ProducerLoredana Addari and Nicola Argamante
Founded1995
Websitewww.ruggericorsini.it

Half Russian, half Italian Nicola Argamante had a great-grandfather who was a general in the Russian army—he was a big beefy Victorianesque guy with a flowing beard and spectacles, and his image adorns the few bottles of excellent Pinot Nero that Nicola makes. Nicola is big too, but he doesn’t wear a cavalry uniform.

corsini_great-grandfather

The general died before the revolution. His son, a colonel, escaped Stalin’s Russia via Helsinki to live with his wife’s family in Vilnius, only to be arrested in 1939 by the Russian secret police. His son, Nicola’s father, made his way to Italy.

Nicola was born in Tuscany and raised in Piedmont. There he met a lithe woman from Sardinia with jet-black hair, a fine roman nose, and a mesmerizing accent. They were at the University of Turin together: she was getting a post-graduate degree in viticulture; he a PhD in vine disease and ampelography, and they fell completely in love.

corsini_harvest

In the early 1990s Nicola was consulting for various producers in the Langhe while writing his papers and fulfilling his degree requirements when he stumbled upon the hamlet of Corsini. It lay in the southern, somewhat cooler zone of the appellation, tucked away in a little valley just north of Monforte d’Alba, a couple of houses and farm buildings surrounded by vines. He took Loredana there. In 1995 they got married, bought the hamlet, and started their life together.

Podere Ruggeri Corsini: farm + Nicola’s mother’s surname + name of hamlet. Nicola’s mother is in there because she provided money to make the purchase.

Corsini: Vittoria and Francesca

Nicola still consults here and there, but mostly he is in the cellar while Loredana is in the vines, while Vittoria and Francesa, their two daughters, are involved in the domaine. They have 25 acres of vineyards divided among 24 parcels, and average just over 6,000 cases of wine each year. They walk a really nice line between traditionalists and modernists, meaning that their wines are transparent with clear impressions, while possessing superb drinkability.

Some facts pertaining to the farm’s ecology: The lightest traditional bottle is used, to have a lighter carbon footprint. Solar panels provide most of the power for heating and lighting in the winery, and water used in winery operations is purified on site via a method of phyto-purification. In the vineyards, the only synthetic applications used are those based on copper and sulfur to fight mildew diseases. In the wines, SO2 applications are kept to a minimum, and the red wines are not normally fined or filtered (they throw deposit).

Corsini family

The Wines

WineBlendDescription
Langhe Rosato
NebbioloThis comes from a one-acre parcel planted in 2002. The site faces east at 1,400 feet above sea level, the grapes are hand-harvested, and typically the wine is a result of a combination of saignée and direct pressing (roughly 50-50). Elevage is done in steel. This is not a shy, retiring flower of a rosé; it has substance and class, and it can age for a couple of years. Tech sheet here.
Langhe Rosso Matotbased on Dolcetto, with varying percentages of Nebbiolo, Barbera, Albarossa and Pinot NeroThe one blended Corsini wine. This, effectively, is the farm s second label, created to enable it to keep a high standard with its other wines (everything is estate bottled at Ruggeri Corsini; nothing is sold in bulk to traders, a fact that makes quality control for a wine like Matot particularly important). Matot is, as Nicola says, a glass of Piedmontese red.


Barbera d’Alba
BarberaA Piedmontese classic, Barbera is the mainstay of the farm, representing 40-45% of production. Made and aged in steel tanks. Quite dark, full, earthy and meaty, and carried by delicious acidity, the grape’s signature. 1,200-1,600 cases annually.
Barbera d’Alba Superiore “Armujan”

BarberaA reserve Barbera, only made in good years. Base is 4.4 acres of vines planted in 1947 and 1959, wine is aged in mostly older wood vessels of various sizes. This may be the wine Nicola and Loredana are most proud of, and they bottle it in large formats. The word Armujan is dialect for apricot trees; one of these old hillside parcels once supported an orchard. When it’s made, 750 cases.
Langhe Nebbiolo
NebbioloDOC rules for Langhe Nebbiolo require 85% of the wine to be from the declared variety and vintage. Corsini’s is 100% Nebbiolo entirely from the declared vintage. This class of Nebbiolo has become the wine of choice for aficionados who can’t afford to drink Barolo every evening and who know that such wines often contain declassified Barbaresco or Barolo.
Barolo Bricco San Pietro
NebbioloCorsini's holdings in San Pietro and Bussia are its prized parcels. They face one another in the little valley that falls steeply off the hill of Montforte and runs north-northwest. The soils are fundamentally the same, although San Pietro has a bit more sand and certainly, because of its steeper incline, less depth. The differences lie in incline--San Pietro is quite steep compared to Bussia's gentler slope--and expositions. San Pietro is mostly east-facing; Bussia looks west-southwest.

The vines in San Pietro were planted in 1997 and total just over three acres. This is the traditional Barolo, aged for 30 months in large Slavonian oak casks (the forests are in Croatia) known as botte in Italian (foudre in French). The site's thinner soils and eastern exposition make for a more elegant, transparent wine, and you often get a chalky lift from the calcareous soils. Roughly 500 cases annually.

Barolo Bussia CorsiniNebbiolo

These are older vines than San Pietro's, just under three acres planted in 1959 in soils that run two-three meters deep. These days the élevage is split between botte casks and 500L demi-muids (in the turn of the century years, Nicola used 225L barrels rather than 500L, and now the latter is employed to avoid reduction in the wine, which Bussia can be inclined to do, as much as anything else) for 30 months. If San Pietro is the elegant, Bussia is the dramatic, with a darker profile and scents of iron and balsamic. Roughly 450 cases annually.