2009 LA MAGGIORINA Le Piane

This is how to do the new austere well: with a light, baby Barbaresco style wine from a near-abandoned region in Piedmont. A fabulous wine yet with an honest country heart: violet, roses after rain, stewed cherry, and fresh-smelling wet forest twigs and gun shop, the expansive feeling of the perfume slowed down by refined tannins, like stopping on a mountain path to take photos of a richly-coloured sunset with a super-sharp lens. From a once thriving wine-region 1-hour drive North-West of Milan, vineyards deserted in the 1950s for the textile industry, the Colline Novaresi DOC is in the highest and most eastern part of Piedmont. This is made near the town of Boca from the Nebbiolo grape which gives the wine a beautiful pale colour and perfume, also seen in expensive Barolo and Barbaresco, but contains up to 30% Croatina grape, a local variety which gives a violet colour and tannic quality slightly deeper than Dolcetto. Beautiful perfumes and tight tannins somehow make austere days seem rich.

Boca, a little corner of Piedmont, Italy's smartest winemaking region, has come up with a hauntingly characterful red. Using the same grape variety (nebbiolo) as local heavyweights Barolo and Barbaresco, plus a little of the local croatina, the wine is restrained and elegant, with a distinctive earthiness beneath the gentle hedgerow fruit.