Claudio Mariotto Timorasso

Finally, the great reds of Piedmont have an age-worthy white wine to match. Now at a critical point in its revival, Timorasso is one of the most exciting wines currently flowing out of Italy. With its clear minerality, structure and longevity, Timorasso, which was virtually extinct just 30 years ago, leaps out of obscurity into your glass.

Timorasso is a thin-skinned, troublemaker of a white grape that’s native to the south-eastern corner of Piedmont near Alessandria, from an area known as Colli Tortonesi or “the hills of Tortona”. Its bunches ripen unevenly and are fragile, easily detaching from the vine, and can suffer from failures at flowering. It has a dense canopy that needs serious taming and a tendency to over-produce, requiring specific growing sites. In other words, growing Timorasso is an immense amount of work with plenty of risk – no wonder extinction was imminent in the 1980s.

The revival of Timorasso began at the end of the 1980s, when Walter Massa made his first attempt at a vintage with fruit from the scarce remaining vines of the variety. Following Walter on this quest, and hobby vintages, was his friend Claudio Mariotto, whose family had also been farming in the region for generations. As understanding of the grape grew and winemaking technique improved throughout the ‘90s, each man planted their best hillsides to Timorasso and formed the early crus Costa del Vento and Sterpi (Walter, 1990 & 1996) and Pitasso and Cavallina (Claudio, 1995 & 2000). Serious critical acclaim came with the 2004 vintage, where three of these cru wines were awarded Tre Bicchiere by the Gambero Rosso guide.

These pioneer producers defined the variety’s modern style: native yeast spontaneous ferments, very slow and gentle pressing, stainless steel ageing on fine lees for a year with light battonage and further bottle age before release. Oak is never used. We work with Claudio’s three cru vineyards: Bricco San Michele (young vines, west face), Cavallina (southeast face of Pitasso hillside) and Pitasso (south/southwest face).

From barely three scattered hectares of Timorasso remaining in 1990, to more than 150 hectares in production today, Timorasso is now on the verge of stardom. Claudio Mariotto makes the benchmark wines of this variety and we are extremely proud to represent them in Australia.