Aosta Valley (Valle d'Aosta)

The Aosta Valley is the smallest wine region in Italy and the one that has given up least. Where other regions pulled out their local grapes for something more saleable, this valley kept its own, and it survived by co-operating rather than competing. Almost nothing it makes ever leaves.

The Landscape Vines sit on terraces of glacial origin — stony, gravelly soils full of debris the glaciers carried down and left. The difficulty is not climate but geometry: the land is fragmented into plots so small that, as the phrase goes here, the hectare is an excessive unit of measurement. That fragmentation should have killed commercial viticulture altogether, and the reason it did not is co-operation. The valley’s cooperatives are the backbone of its wine and the only structure under which holdings of a few rows each could ever add up to a region.

One Appellation, Nine Subzones The whole valley bottles under a single denomination, Valle d’Aosta or Vallée d’Aoste, subdivided into nine named zones: Donnas, Arnad-Montjovet, Chambave, Chambave Moscato, Nus, Nus Malvoisie, Torrette, Enfer d’Arvier, and Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle. Each is tiny. At Morgex and La Salle, Prié Blanc grows on pergolas built so low that the harvest has to be done kneeling; these are among the highest vineyards in Europe, and the vines are ungrafted, because phylloxera cannot survive at that altitude. At Arvier, a natural amphitheatre of morainic soil collects so much heat and solar radiation that the subzone is called Enfer — hell.

Salassi and Romans Wine has been made here as long as anyone can document. The Salassi were cultivating these slopes by 23 BC and storing their wine in wooden barrels, and the Romans thought well enough of it to stock up whenever they passed through Augusta Praetoria Salassorum, the city now called Aosta. In the Middle Ages the valley’s wines held a reputation out of all proportion to the quantity made, which remains true.

The Grapes Petit Rouge is the principal red and the base of Torrette. Fumin is the most serious and most ageworthy, dark and peppery. Cornalin, Vien de Nus, Mayolet and the pale Premetta — effectively a natural rosé — fill out an unusually intact set of natives. Nebbiolo grows in the central valley and more heavily in the lower part, where it is called picoutener, after the tender petiole; at Donnas, Pont Saint-Martin and Bard it is genetically identical to the Langhe vine but makes something recognisably its own. Among whites, Prié Blanc is unique to Morgex, Petite Arvine crosses from the Valais, and Malvoisie is a local name for Pinot Gris rather than any Malvasia — a trap worth knowing. Chardonnay, Müller-Thurgau, Gamay and Pinot Noir round it out.

The Critical Take This is heroic viticulture in the strictest sense: every operation is manual, the terraces must be maintained by hand, and the economics only work because the wines sell locally at prices tourism supports. That makes the region hard to buy from and easy to romanticise. What is genuinely admirable is the refusal to replace the natives — Fumin, Cornalin, Premetta and Prié Blanc would not exist anywhere else if this valley had followed the fashion. Blanc de Morgex is the one to try for the sheer improbability of it: a taut, low-alcohol, high-acid mountain white grown higher than almost any vine in Europe, on its own roots.

At the Table Fontina, in fonduta or melted over polenta concia; carbonada, beef stewed with wine and onions; motzetta of cured beef or chamois; and seupa à la Valpellinentze, a soup of cabbage, bread and fontina. The reds are light enough to handle mountain food without overwhelming it.

Where to Start Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle, then a Torrette, then a Fumin if the valley has convinced you. Buy them when you see them; they rarely travel.