Barbacàn Rosso 2021

Location: Italy, Lombardy, Valtelina

Winemaker: Angelo Sega and his sons Luca and Matteo

Grapes: Chiavennesca (Nebbiolo)

Winemaking: Grapes are destemmed and given a short maceration in stainless steel. Fermented with native yeasts in steel and aged in both neutral oak and steel. Unfined, unfiltered, no SO2.

From us at M&L: Angelo Sega and his sons, Luca and Matteo, personify what is known as “heroic viticulture”. High in the Alps, near San Giacomo di Teglio in the wine growing heart of Lombardy, they climb through some of the steepest vineyards in the world. Working the 6 hectares on the side of a mountain growing Chiavennasca (native name of Nebbiolo) they produce astoundingly pure wines.

The family thrives in the toil. Snow-covered, wind-swept, sun-baked or otherwise, Angelo and his brood are there; happily carrying a 5 pound bucket of manure to be carefully plopped atop a fledgling plot, or pruning in January - eyelashes crystalized by ice.

If you are feeling like you need a lift (these days who doesn’t?), drink these guys’ wines, and then follow their Instagram for a look at the beauty of work and love and joy on display as the team somehow find the energy to periodically perform dance numbers to break away from, perhaps, patching a terrace wall, or hauling clippings or filling bins or some other labor.

Angelo says it best: “We are farmers in the Alps, we preserve pluralism of our ancient native vines and the cultural identity of traditional agronomic practices. In our wine we express the vintages with their oddities and their balances, always different and always unpredictable. Every season we repeat ancient gestures, carrying on the identity of an Alpine people that has always been linked to the cultivation of Chiavennasca.”