2024 Cantine Garrone, Munaloss, Vino Rosso IGT, Piemonte, Italy.
I saw, a value priced, small production alpine red from Cantine Garrone available for under $20, and I couldn’t resist, especially coming from legendary importer Kermit Lynch, one of Calliornia’s best talent spotters, and it is a lovely and pure Nebbiolo based wine. This bright, ruby red 2024 Cantine Garrone Munaloss Red is a cuvée of 80% Prünent (The local name for Nebbiolo) and 20% Croatina, which delivers bright floral notes, juicy red berry, cherry, plum and tangy currant fruits and a rounded silky palate. He grapes come from over 40 individual growers from the communes of Crevoladossola, Montecrestese, Masera, Trontano with the wine being fermented and aged exclusively in stainless steel. Matteo Garrone’s clean tank raised Munaloss bottling, the Garrone family makes from mainly Nebbiolo, though as Kermit Lynch says, that it is even more irresistible by the addition of a splash of Croatina, as seen often in Alto Piemonte, and of which adds an aromatic intensity. The Garrone family, Piermario, Roberto, Marco and Matteo Garrone craft this wine from 10 to 50 year old vines, set on sandy loam and gneiss soils on steep slopes in the very upper edges of the Piemonte region. Being new to Cantine Garrone, I was left wishing of a visit to the emote spots of Piemonte and of needing of another rip to Italy!
Importer Kermit Lynch intrigued me with the description, that Garrone, which they say is tucked in a narrow valley deep in the Italian Alps, just a stone’s throw from the Matterhorn, in the remote village of Domodossola, which maybe is home to some of the most exciting Nebbiolo being made in Italy today! It could be, Lynch adds, the country’s greatest value bottling made from that grape, which is high praise. Known locally as Prünent, Nebbiolo, grown in this northern Piemontese outpost is perfectly poised to produce reds that soar with fragrance and finesse, as this Munloss shows. The cooler weather plays a significant role, as does the regionally distinctive farming system called toppia that is employed here and helps create deep, but approachable version of this varietal. Training vines this way, on massive stone and wooden pergolas, ensures slow ripening and as much protection from the elements as possible, not unlike Valtelina in Lombardy. These factors yield a supremely elegant and silky expression of Nebbiolo, a style the Garrones has mastered over four generations of cultivating this dramatic, isolated mountain terroir. Again this pure, lightly spicy Nebbiolo blend has hints of incense, anise and orange peel, almost feeling carbonic, but still darkly rich, is an easy to love wine.
($19 Est.) 90 Points, grapelive