After the dry 2017, the long, wet winter of 2018 replenished water reserves. A rainy spring was followed by a hot, dry late summer, allowing the grapes to mature fully. This was a bountiful vintage, producing fresh, floral, and immensely enjoyable wines. The tannic structure is slightly lighter, making this vintage a bit easier to drink sooner than others.
2018 Proprietà Sperino Lessona
96 PTS
— Orazio Campoli, January 2026
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.