Calosso DOC

Three communes in the Asti hills — Calosso, Costigliole d’Asti and Castagnole delle Lanze — and one grape rescued from extinction by a dozen people and a university. It is one of the smallest denominations in Piedmont and among the most deliberate.

The Rescue The registered file tells it plainly. On these hills, where viticulture has always been an integral part of economic and social life, this variety has always been cultivated and known, becoming over time something of the recognition symbol of this zone. Then the crux: present since time immemorial in the old vineyards in small quantities, it was preserved from disappearance thanks to the stubbornness and intelligence of growers who gave the new generations a piece of local history, where the vineyards planted to gamba rossa have risen again in a highly suited territory.

Gamba di Pernice The grape is Gamba Rossa, known everywhere locally as Gamba di Pernice — partridge’s leg — for the red-violet colour the stalk and stem take before véraison. It had all but vanished by the late twentieth century. Its recovery took twelve years of trials with the University of Turin before replanting, and the DOC followed in 2011. Today six wineries make it.

Grape Varieties Gamba Rossa at 90 to 100 per cent, with up to a tenth of other Piedmontese black varieties. The disciplinare is demanding for so small a name: twenty months of ageing before release, and thirty for the riserva. The file describes a ruby wine taking orange reflections with age, delicate on the nose.

The Critical Take Gamba di Pernice is a genuine rarity and, unusually for a rescued variety, a genuinely good wine rather than merely an interesting one. It is pale, high-toned and firmly acidic, with sour cherry, dried rose and a peppery finish — closer in weight to Freisa or a light Nebbiolo than to the Barbera that surrounds it, and it takes the long mandatory ageing better than its colour suggests. Six producers and a few hectares mean you will not find it by accident.

Why Rescues Work Here Piedmont has recovered more near-extinct varieties than any other Italian region — Ruchè, Pelaverga, Timorasso, Nascetta, Grignolino and this. The pattern is consistent: a handful of growers, a university department, a decade of trials, then a denomination written tightly enough to stop anyone diluting the result. It is the most effective model of varietal conservation in Italy.

At the Table Astigiano cooking: agnolotti del plin, vitello tonnato, rabbit, bagna càuda, and Robiola di Roccaverano. Serve at 15–16°C.

Benchmark Producers Piero Bussi and Tenuta dei Fiori.