A balanced, harmonious vintage that is just hitting its stride. The 2012 shows a beautiful integration of savory, secondary notes (like tobacco and forest floor) with a core of persistent red fruit. It’s in a perfect drinking window, showcasing the complexity that age brings to this terroir.
2012 Proprietà Sperino Lessona
96 PTS
— Orazio Campoli, February 2025
About the Producer
Proprietà Sperino is the project that put Lessona back on the map. The Sperino family, relatives of the De Marchis, were a dynasty of Turin doctors with a passion for wine: in the 19th century the surgeon Casimiro Sperino left city life for the vineyards of Lessona, and his son Felice, also a doctor, was a serious ampelographer and an early researcher into grafting against phylloxera. After the estate passed to the De Marchi family, winemaking became an amateur affair — until 1999, when Paolo De Marchi, the maestro of Isole e Olena in Chianti Classico, returned with his son Luca to revive his family’s origins.
The terroir, in the shadow of the Alps, is unlike anywhere else in Piedmont: Pliocene marine sands mixed with glacial sediment over igneous rock, extremely acidic, almost without calcium and rich in iron, manganese and zinc. It does not make heavy wines, but Nebbiolo (locally Spanna) of profound perfume, finesse and razor-sharp mineral elegance, lighter in colour than Barolo but just as complex and age-worthy. The Lessona comes from the estate’s finest vineyards, including Ormeggio, Castagnola and Covà, fermented spontaneously in open-top wooden vats and aged for 33 months in barrel, then years in bottle.
Tasted across vintages, the wines show how faithfully they record the year: 2008 haunting and fully mature, 2010 the legend, 2014 lean and savory, 2015 plush and generous, 2018 fresh and floral. The Rosa del Rosa, a Nebbiolo and Vespolina rosato, is as serious as rosé gets.