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Location: Italy, Piedmont, Alba
Winemaker: Fabio Gea
Grapes: Nebbiolo, Barbera
From the importer Louis/Dressner: One of the craziest, funny, ‘uh-oh’ and provocative winemakers, Fabio Gea makes delicious wines from small parcels in Barbaresco. The land comes from his maternal grandfather Pòtu, (diminutive for Giuseppe in dialect) and is centered around different parts of Barbaresco, mostly near the Bricco. During his grandfather's time, the vines were still in polyculture, although he was apparently an expert who at one time had over 200 grape varieties on his land. But the winemaking and vineyard care skipped a generation and most of the plots became semi-abandoned. Fabio, after receiving his doctorate and working as a successful geologist for corporate companies for a number of years, decided to leave that world and reprise the family winemaking tradition. He also started bringing the vineyards back into shape.
The whole enterprise is a few lines of Nebbiolo inside and outside of the Barbaresco designation, as well as small patches of Dolcetto and Barbera—in total 0.9 hectares from family land and some additional plots he's been able to rent. All vineyard work is done by hand, with minimal treatments of only copper and sulfur. In the cellar, apart from experiments in ‘toilet’ (Gea has crafted his own porcelain amphoras), he uses older barrels of 440 liters and 500 liters, glass and stainless steel. The total production is around 5000 bottles a year of 18 different wines. Some wines are traditional, others definitely outside-the-box.
Some interesting facts about Fabio’s wines: The labels kindly ask you to consider not throwing away the bottle and to re-use it. The handmade paper intentionally comes off easily for re-use. Some wines don't even have labels at all, but rather a little piece of paper dangling off a string from the neck of the bottle. There is an elaborate code on each label that Fabio uses to indicate, including but not only: lot position, hand-harvesting, foot-trodding, de-stemming, bottling times, barrel aging, sulfur, aging vessel…the list goes on, at Fabio’s behest. In addition, almost all Fabio’s wines have a string with a hanging label—he suggests taking the hanging label in one hand and pulling the lace up in order to break the seal, then to ‘undress’ the bottle neck from the cotton/line strip and the joined wax cap together. Some people love to uncork directly without ‘undressing the bottles: the risk is to have residual wax in wine.
Location: Italy, Piedmont, Alba
Winemaker: Fabio Gea
Grapes: Nebbiolo, Barbera
From the importer Louis/Dressner: One of the craziest, funny, ‘uh-oh’ and provocative winemakers, Fabio Gea makes delicious wines from small parcels in Barbaresco. The land comes from his maternal grandfather Pòtu, (diminutive for Giuseppe in dialect) and is centered around different parts of Barbaresco, mostly near the Bricco. During his grandfather's time, the vines were still in polyculture, although he was apparently an expert who at one time had over 200 grape varieties on his land. But the winemaking and vineyard care skipped a generation and most of the plots became semi-abandoned. Fabio, after receiving his doctorate and working as a successful geologist for corporate companies for a number of years, decided to leave that world and reprise the family winemaking tradition. He also started bringing the vineyards back into shape.
The whole enterprise is a few lines of Nebbiolo inside and outside of the Barbaresco designation, as well as small patches of Dolcetto and Barbera—in total 0.9 hectares from family land and some additional plots he's been able to rent. All vineyard work is done by hand, with minimal treatments of only copper and sulfur. In the cellar, apart from experiments in ‘toilet’ (Gea has crafted his own porcelain amphoras), he uses older barrels of 440 liters and 500 liters, glass and stainless steel. The total production is around 5000 bottles a year of 18 different wines. Some wines are traditional, others definitely outside-the-box.
Some interesting facts about Fabio’s wines: The labels kindly ask you to consider not throwing away the bottle and to re-use it. The handmade paper intentionally comes off easily for re-use. Some wines don't even have labels at all, but rather a little piece of paper dangling off a string from the neck of the bottle. There is an elaborate code on each label that Fabio uses to indicate, including but not only: lot position, hand-harvesting, foot-trodding, de-stemming, bottling times, barrel aging, sulfur, aging vessel…the list goes on, at Fabio’s behest. In addition, almost all Fabio’s wines have a string with a hanging label—he suggests taking the hanging label in one hand and pulling the lace up in order to break the seal, then to ‘undress’ the bottle neck from the cotton/line strip and the joined wax cap together. Some people love to uncork directly without ‘undressing the bottles: the risk is to have residual wax in wine.