Colli Piacentini DOC

The umbrella denomination of the Piacenza hills, covering four parallel valleys where Emilia meets Lombardy and Piedmont. It is the most varied appellation in the region and it contains one genuinely rare wine.

The Terroir The registered file is brief and candid, as the Piacentino files are. Viticulture here has a very important socio-economic value; and although the hill environments and the agronomic interventions vary, the soils are to be considered of good fertility and possess the specific characteristics of quality viticulture. In practice the zone runs up the Tidone, Trebbia, Nure and Arda valleys on calcareous clay and marl at 150 to 400 metres, on the northern flank of the Apennines.

Grape Varieties The white side is the interesting one. Ortrugo is the local speciality — sharp, faintly bitter, long ignored as a blending grape and now bottled on its own; Malvasia di Candia Aromatica is the aromatic one, a distinct variety from the neutral Malvasia di Candia of central Italy. Trebbiano Romagnolo, Moscato Bianco, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay follow, along with a set of near-vanished local names — Bervedino, Melara, Santa Maria — and, improbably, Marsanne. The reds are Barbera, Croatina, Pinot Nero and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Vin Santo di Vigoleno The rarity. In the hills above the walled village of Vigoleno, a handful of growers make a dried-grape wine from a blend that exists nowhere else — Marsanne, Bervedino, Melara, Ortrugo, Sauvignon and Trebbiano Romagnolo — aged for years in small barrels under the roof, where it freezes in winter and bakes in summer. Production is measured in hundreds of bottles. It is one of the genuinely great obscure sweet wines of Italy.

The Critical Take Piacenza suffers from being administratively Emilian, geographically Lombard and gastronomically its own thing, and from making most of its wine frizzante in an era that reads bubbles as unserious. Taken on its terms the province is excellent value: the Ortrugo is a genuinely good aperitivo white, the aromatic Malvasia is underrated, and the still reds under Gutturnio can age. Almost none of it leaves the province, which the Piacentini seem content with.

Four Valleys The zone is not one hillside but four, running south from the Po into the Apennines: the Val Tidone on the Lombard border, then the Trebbia, the Nure and the Arda. Each was settled and planted separately, each has its own cooperative, and the differences between them are real — the Tidone is warmer and gives the best Malvasia, the Arda the coolest and the longest-lived reds. A single denomination covering all four is a convenience of administration rather than a description of a place.

At the Table Piacentino cooking, which is salumi first: coppa, pancetta and salame piacentino, then pisarei e fasò, anolini in brodo, and Grana Padano. Whites at 10–12°C, the Vin Santo at 14–16°C.

Benchmark Producers La Stoppa, Luretta, Torre Fornello.