
Reviews
Technical Details
- WinemakerGiovanni, Mauro and Mirella Manzone
- CountryItaly
- RegionPiedmont
- Sub-RegionLanghe
- AppellationLanghe
- VineyardGramolere
- Oak12 months in neutral casks on the lees
- Alcohol13.5%
Giovanni Manzone Langhe Rossese Bianco Rosserto 2021
We look forward to the new vintage of this wine EVERY year. The Manzone family has been farming lands in the Monforte d’Alba for nearly a hundred years. Best known for their fantastic cru Barolos, the Manzones also happen to produce a stellar Rossese Bianco, an extremely rare and prized white wine that hardly ever leaves the Langhe. Thanks to over a decade of importing their wines directly, we were granted unprecedented access to this mythical creature. Piedmont and First Bottle – the only places on earth to find this stunner!
Only $22.95 to have your wine world rocked to its very core? Somms, wine geeks, and insatiably curious rare wine hunters...this one's for you! To be frank, this is as good a bargain as you’re going to get for a rarified Italian treasure on this level. There’s no beating around the bush: we absolutely love this wine. Texturally rich, ripping acidity, salty minerality, exotic florals, citrus notes, stone fruits, balsamic, and melon...I mean, seriously, this just goes on forever, and each new sip or extra minute in the glass seems to reveal something new and beguiling. You could spend hours on a single glass...if it weren’t so fresh, bright, and delicious. To put it most simply: this is a must-have.
This exceptional and unique wine hails from two Manzone vineyards, the MGA di Castelletto and the MGA di Gramolere, in the Monforte d'Alba municipality. The grapes ripen late in the season, from late September to early October when they’ve turned colors of deep golden to pale pink. The grapes undergo a brief maceration, providing weight, color, and a small nuance of phenolic bitterness (i.e., tannins) to the finished wine, before aging for a year in large oak casks. Settling and blending occur in stainless steel before bottling a scant few thousand bottles of wine.
The Rossese Bianco de Langhe grape traces its roots back to eastern Liguria, along the postcard-picturesque coast of Cinque Terre. The name “rossese” is commonly used across a great number of Italian varieties, so there is often confusion amongst the varieties that, in fact, share little to no common ancestry. The grape eventually traveled and made a home in the Monforte and Roddino villages of the Langhe, where only a handful of producers still make it today. The Manzone family saved the local grape from becoming all but extinct when they rescued clippings and propagated a vineyard back in 1982.
While long prized for its high-quality wines, the very small berries, and lower yields allowed the rise of more popular grapes like Vermentino to assert dominance in the region. It took the Manzone family the better part of three decades working with the University of Torino to get this grape verified and added to the Langhe DOC in 2011. Some truly cool stuff that is going to blow your mind the second you taste it and continue to thrill for the next decade! While it lasts!
PAIRING IDEAS: This might be the best-ever wine to have with a Piemontese classic - Vitello Tonnato - basically poached veal with a tuna dressing. This is Piedmont’s take on surf and turf, and perfect for large gatherings.