Gutturnio DOC

The red of the Colli Piacentini, made from Barbera and Croatina on the hills south of Piacenza where Emilia meets Lombardy and Piedmont. It is named after a piece of Roman silver.

The Name A gutturnium was a two-handled Roman drinking vessel, and one was pulled out of the bed of the river Trebbia near Piacenza in the nineteenth century; it sits today in the museum at Palazzo Farnese. When the local wine needed a name in the 1930s, it was given that one. It is among the very few Italian denominations named after an object rather than a place, a grape or a saint.

The Terroir The registered file is brief and candid. Viticulture at Piacenza, it says, has a very important socio-economic value and is tied to this wine; and although the hill environments and the agronomic interventions vary, the Piacentino soils are of good fertility and possess the specific characteristics of quality viticulture. In practice the zone runs up four parallel valleys — Tidone, Trebbia, Nure and Arda — on calcareous clay and marl at 150 to 400 metres, on the same Apennine flank that produces the Oltrepò Pavese immediately to the west.

Grape Varieties Barbera and Croatina, and nothing else. Barbera brings the acidity and the colour, Croatina the soft tannin, the blackberry and the faintly bitter finish; the proportions are roughly 55 to 70 per cent Barbera. It is the same pairing that makes the Oltrepò reds over the border, under a different name and with the ratio reversed.

Still and Frizzante The denomination covers a Superiore, a Classico Superiore, a Riserva and a Classico Riserva — and a frizzante, which is what Piacenza actually drinks. The lightly sparkling version, purple and foaming and served cold, is the everyday wine of the province, poured with salumi at lunch without ceremony. The still Riserva is a different proposition, capable of ten years.

The Critical Take Gutturnio suffers from being frizzante in the imagination and serious on the label, and the two versions are genuinely different wines sold under one name. The frizzante is very good at what it does and travels badly. The Riserva is underrated: Croatina gives it a plush middle that Barbera alone never has, and it is one of the better value structured reds in northern Italy. Piacenza is also the home of Ortrugo and of the aromatic Malvasia di Candia, so the province is worth more than one visit.

At the Table Piacentino cooking, which is salumi above all: coppa piacentina, pancetta, salame, then pisarei e fasò, braised horse, and Grana Padano. Frizzante at 14–15°C, Riserva at 17–18°C.

Benchmark Producers La Tosa, Luretta, Il Poggiarello.