Claudio Vio ‘Runcu Brujau’ Rosso 2022

Location: Italy, Liguria

Winemaker: Claudio Vio

Grapes: Rossese

From the importer PortoVino: Liguria, the crescent-shaped strip of a region that arcs from Tuscany to France and separates Piemonte from the Mediterranean Ocean, is a mountainous land of beautiful but often rugged beaches, spectacular seafood and vegetables, and yes, wine. Most visitors get their first glimpse of Liguria by speeding along the A10 autostrada, ducking into and out of tunnels carved into the steep, coastal mountains perched just above the sparkling sea below. As you drive from Genoa towards France in Liguria Ponente (western Liguria, or the Liguria of the Setting Sun), you see vineyards on your left, below the autostrada. But if you take the exit at the coastal town of Albenga and head uphill instead of down to the sea, you wind your way steeply up into an utterly different world from the seaside resorts and vines.

It’s here, in the tiny village of Vendone, 12 kilometers inland and 300 meters above the sea, that Ettore and Natalina Vio planted vines and olive trees amidst the mountain scrub in the 1970s. Their son Claudio and his wife, Maria Grazia, now tend the family farm. A dispersed patchwork of tiny, terraced vineyard plots adding up to just two hectares — mostly Pigato, with a little Vermentino — yield just enough wine for us to bring in a few hundred cases a year. A hectare of olive orchards gives even less of their beautifully delicate olive oil. (Ask us nicely, and we might be able to get you a little.)

Farming is lotta integrata. All harvesting is manual and fermentations are with native yeasts.

Pigato grows throughout Liguria, but the best is in the “zona dell’ albenganese”, or the region around and above the coastal town of Albenga. Jancis Robinson’s Wine Grapes book says, “Morphological and DNA comparisons have clearly established that… Pigato and Vermentino are one and the same variety”, but Ligurian growers disagree. The grapes certainly don’t look the same in the vineyard, and the resulting wines taste different, even when vinified the same. The name “Pigato” comes from a dialect word meaning freckled and refers to the spotted appearance of the grape skins.

In our experience, this is a Pigato that benefits from extra time in bottle. It’s often pretty wound up when it’s released and gets more expressive with bottle age. In good vintages, it also continues to age in compelling ways for at least several years. We’ve drunk five year old bottles that were spectacular.