Currà

Currà sits on the southwest-facing hillsides of Neive at 200–270 metres on Helvetian Serravallian marls. The Sottimano family, who farm this site as their flagship vineyard, have established Currà as one of Neive’s most serious and age-worthy MGAs through decades of consistent single-vineyard bottlings.

The Terroir The Helvetian soils deliver the commune’s characteristic power and mineral tension; the southwest exposure ensures full ripening of Nebbiolo even in cooler vintages. Sottimano’s commitment to traditional vinification in large casks highlights the terroir with great clarity. Sottimano’s insistence on old vines, low yields, and long large-cask aging draws every ounce of the Helvetian site’s power and mineral tension into the glass with unusual clarity.

The Critical Take Currà is among the more structured and demanding Neive Barbarescos: dark-fruited, firmly tannic, and mineral in youth, requiring ten or more years before the aromatics fully emerge. In profile: dried rose, iron, tar, tobacco, and liquorice, with a long, precise finish that is the hallmark of a serious Helvetian site. Dark, firm, and slow to reveal itself, Currà is among the most serious and age-worthy Barbarescos of Neive — a wine that asks for a decade of patience and repays it in full.

At the Table Currà’s structure and dark fruit are made for the richest Piedmontese cooking: brasato al Barbaresco, braised game, wild boar, and truffled tajarin. A young bottle demands a two- to three-hour decant to coax out its reticent aromatics; serve at 17 to 18 degrees in a large Burgundy glass. It needs ten years or more before the rose and tar emerge and holds twenty in great vintages. With aged Castelmagno and time, a mature Currà delivers the long, precise, mineral finish that is the signature of Sottimano and of serious Neive. This is emphatically a wine for the patient collector rather than the impulse buyer, so lay it down and forget it for a decade before pulling the first cork. When you finally do, give it ample air, pour it beside the richest dish on the table, and it will reward the long wait with the depth and precision that mark Sottimano at its serious best.

Benchmark Producers Sottimano (the defining estate), Adriano Marco e Vittorio.