Accornero Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese Bricco
del Bosco Vigne Vecchie 2006-2015

BY IAN D'AGATA | NOVEMBER 12, 2019&nbsp;Grignolino is one of Italy’s
most underrated varieties, and so are its wines. The grape and its wines were historically
famous and exceptionally popular as they were much sought-after in Italy as
recently as the late 1970s. Soon thereafter Grignolino fell on hard times, when
practically black, high-pH, overripe and obviously sweet red wines became, the
desired norm. Happily, most fads are short-lived, and when people began to
realize that sweet, high-alcohol and generally overripe reds made for very poor
company at the dining table, it was time for light and medium-bodied wines to
have their turn in the sun once again. <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1573571551245-Welcome+to+Accornero_copy.jpg"> The entrance to&nbsp;the Accornero estate 

Grignolino is characterized by
dark pink to pale red hues (often with orangey tinges), high tannins, bright
acids and mostly floral aromas and flavors with little in the way of obvious
fleshy fruit. In fact, such lighter-styled wines (or the best examples, at least)
offer brilliantly balanced drinking experiences that are remarkably complex,
food-friendly and ageworthy. Grignolino is the poster child of a specific group
of &nbsp;“less is more” grapes, a point underscored
by what is arguably Italy’s best Grignolino, Accornero’s Grignolino del
Monferrato Casalese Bricco del Bosco Vigne Vecchie.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1573571579212-The+Grignolino+vineyards_copy.jpg"> Accornero's Grignolino vineyards 

Understanding the Grignolino Grape Variety and Its Wines

There are three main wines
made from Grignolino. The best examples are 100% Girgnolinos but the minimum required
by law is 85%: Grignolino d’Asti (usually the lightest and most perfumed of
all), Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese (usually bigger and richer) and
Piemonte Grignolino (a less famous category, but the wines are often surprisingly
good). The Grignolino variety is also (rarely) called by other names, such as
Arlandino and Barbesino. “Grignolino” most likely derives either from the
Piedmontese dialect word&nbsp;grignole,“grating
of teeth,” in a reference to the variety’s high acidity and tannic clout, or
perhaps from another meaning of the word, “seeds,” because the grapes contain,
on average, more seeds (three) than other varieties (which they usually only have
two). 

Grignolino is the 11th most
planted variety in Piedmont, but at 877 hectares, it’s not far behind the very popular
Arneis (947 hectares) in this specific classification (2010 data). Though Grignolino’s
hectarage has steadily fallen over the last two decades, signs of an end to this
hemorrhage have only recently begun to surface. Grignolino is, in fact, still much
more prevalent today in Piedmont’s countryside (especially in the provinces of
Asti and Alessandria) than many of the region’s other currently fashionable varieties,
such as Erbaluce, Favorita, Nascetta and Ruchè. The downturn in Grignolino’s
fortunes is really only a recent event. It is well demonstrated by
documentation how Grignolino was a favorite in centuries past of nobles and
wealthy families, who much preferred its light-bodied, perfumed, refined wines to
the more rustic, coarser reds. In fact, Grignolinos were some of Piedmont’s
most expensive and sought-after wines right up to the beginning of the 20th
century. <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1573571616423-The+soil+at+Accornero+is+rich+in+fossils_copy.jpg"> The soils at Accornero are rich in fossils 

Grignolino’s fall from grace
was not solely the result of a bad fashion trend; the variety has a number of less-than-desirable
characteristics that also contributed to its current out of favor status.
Depending on the clone or the biotype, Grignolino can have very long, large, rather
compact pyramid-shaped bunches. The compactness makes Grignolino prone to rot.
For this reason, the grape requires good ventilation; add the fact that it also
loves sunlight, clearly Grignolino needs to be planted in top-quality sites. Such
locations are precisely the spots where producers choose to plant Nebbiolo (for
obvious reasons), this explains why plantings of Grignolino in the Langhe have
essentially gone the way of the dodo, the brontosaurus and the archaeopteryx. Grignolino
is also prone to just about all the grapevine diseases, which makes producing
wine that much more of a challenge. (It is especially susceptible to esca– a
real tragedy, for many of Piedmont’s oldest and most beautiful Grignolino
vineyards have been wiped out by this veritable plague over the last decade or
so.) Last but not least, Grignolino is characterized by asynchronous
maturation, especially when yields are allowed to creep upward. Come harvest
time, those many different-colored grapes of varied ripeness levels within bunches
require very time-consuming, tiring and expensive hand sorting, something not
all wineries are especially keen to get involved in. The winemaking doesn’t get
any easier. Though Grignolino has pretty blue grapes that are not especially
pale (it is always a surprise to those familiar with the light pink wines that
typify the variety), it gives up its pigments with difficulty. Extended skin
contact risks leaching out the variety’s not exactly shy tannins, making for a
head-scratching winemaking conundrum.

For all the difficulties and
headaches it presents, or perhaps because of them, Grignolino and its wines are
loved by large numbers of enthusiasts. When producers get it right, the wines
offer a panoply of perfumed aromas and flavors, a complex spectrum ranging from
rose hips to cinnamon to red berries to nutmeg to red cherries to soy sauce to
flint to violet to white pepper to orange zest, and a whole lot more. And with
people looking for lighter-bodied, svelte wines to pair with their locally
sourced, less heavy-handed food preparations, Grignolino’s popularity is
undoubtedly on the rise. I have routinely found over the last five years that
at wine tastings everywhere, Grignolinos almost always emerge as the second or
third favorite wine of the night. Though it is still relatively unknown, and a
hand-sell for most somms in fine dining establishments, I am glad to report
that the numbers of the Grignolino “squadrons of the faithful” are blooming year
after year.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1573571639528-THEGRI%7E3.JPG"> Bricco del Bosco&nbsp;Vigne&nbsp;Vecchie is a Grignolino made in the historic, traditional style, aged up to two years in oak, and quite&nbsp;ageworthy

The Accornero Estate and Its Grignolino

The Accornero estate was founded
in 1897 but entered the modern winemaking age with current owner Ermanno
Accornero’s father Giulio, who started making wine in the mid-1950s. In the
beginning, besides raising farm animals and tending to other crops, Accornero sold
mostly bulk wine, limiting himself to bottling only small amounts for his best,
most faithful customers. At that time the family owned only five hectares of
vines, mostly Barbera, with 0.5 hectares planted to Grignolino. Giulio’s two
sons, Massimo and Ermanno, started taking part in running the winery by the end
of the 1970s and early 1980s, and focused on estate bottling. Massimo is no
longer with us, but Ermanno is still at the helm today, assisted in winemaking
by star-consultant Mario Ronco, who also helps make the small-lot Grignolinos
of many local estates, and is also very well regarded for his high-quality,
large-volume bottlings from Sicily’s famous Cusumano winery.

Accornero is located in
Vignale Monferrato, a commune that is essentially one big Grand Cru area
for Grignolino. Today the estate boasts 30 hectares, of which 25 are planted to
vines. Of these, 4.1 hectares are of &nbsp;Grignolino, divided among the 2.3-hectare
Bricco del Bosco vineyard (five plots planted in 1980) and the 1.8-hectare
Vecchia Vigna (four contiguous plots, planted in 1961 and 1971). The soils are mostly
friable and marly-tufaceous in nature (with some loam and sand) and have a
sub-alkaline pH. Grignolino likes poorly fertile soils such as these. Combining
the variety with Paulsen and Du Lot rootstocks helps curb the variety’s natural
tendency for high vigor. At Accornero, green harvests are performed when
necessary (the aforementioned asynchronous maturation normally leads to a green
harvest at veraison). The estate
makes two Grignolinos, the entry-level and truly outstanding Grignolino del
Monferrato Casalese Bricco del Bosco, from the younger vines and made with no
oak aging, and the oak-aged Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese Bricco del Bosco
Vigne Vecchie, made from the oldest vines, the ones planted back in 1961 and 1971.
The 1961 Grignolino vines are located right next to the 1971 vines, but were
bought by Accornero only recently, in 2015; hence, the fruit from those almost 60-year-old
vines was used to make the Vigne Vecchie bottling starting after that date. <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1573571667277-Getting+ready+to+taste+and+enjoy_copy.jpg"> Getting ready to taste through&nbsp;the verticalAccornero produces roughly
110,000 bottles of wine per year; of these, 12,000 are of Grignolino Bricco del
Bosco and 2,500–3,700, depending on the vintage, of Vecchie Vigne. Today, it is
not unreasonable to consider each of these two wines to be either the best
Grignolinos made in Italy, or at the very least, among the top three wines in
each category.

Although I absolutely adore
the entry-level Bricco del Bosco (one of my half-dozen favorite light-bodied
Italian wines of all time), it is the Vigne Vecchie that is a unique wine, of
which I have never had a bad vintage. It boasts all the characteristics that
make Grignolinos so endearing, but kicks them up a notch or two. The Vigne
Vecchie is a bigger, deeper wine than the Bricco del Bosco tout court, medium-bodied and very
refined but mouthcoating in its rich fruit and tannic presence, a wine brimming
with ripe red cherry, sweet spice and floral nuances that linger long on the
aftertaste. Accornero has tinkered with his winemaking over the years, in order
to achieve the most ageworthy Grignolino possible. For example, he now uses
increasingly longer macerations and fermentations. From 2006 - 2008, macero-fermentations
lasted roughly three weeks, but since 2009 these increased gradually, reaching up
to two months with the 2013 and 2014 vintages (there is now two months’ worth
of skin contact, using the old cappello
sommerso&nbsp;technique with wooden staves keeping the cap down in contact with
the must). The wine ages 30 months in tonneaux (of which roughly 60% are
new, the percentage of new oak changes depending on the vintage characteristics).
I wonder how many readers ever imagined a Grignolino that could spend two years
or more in oak and still taste of anything else; and yet, therein lies the
magic of the Bricco del Bosco Vigne Vecchie, a wine in which the fruit always
sings loud while oakiness is never much of an issue.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1573571688609-The+wines_copy.jpg"> 

The first-ever tasting of every vintage ever made of the Bricco del Bosco Vigne Vecchie. The wines were tasted non-blind directly at the Accornero estate in May 2019 in the company of Ermanno Accornero and Mario RoncoAccornero first made the
Grignolino Vecchie Vigne in 2006, but had wanted to make an oak-aged, ageworthy
Grignolino as far back as the 1970s. He was always very aware that local old-timers
believed most Grignolinos were being drunk much too young, and that the wines come
into their own at three to four years. But at that point in time nobody aged Grignolino
wines at all, preferring to bank on the easygoing, addictively perfumed charms
of the steel-aged versions. Accornero knew this meant missing out on showcasing
the Grignolino variety’s full winemaking potential; after all, it couldn’t be
an accident that all the wines that had reaped important awards and medals in centuries
past were oak-aged. And so, in 2006 he took the plunge and made his first
oak-aged Grignolino (releasing it only in 2011); the rest, as they say, is
history.<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/wines?sort%5Bdirection%5D=desc&amp;sort%5Bname%5D=vintage&amp;wf_dirty=false&amp;wf_export_fields=&amp;wf_export_format=&amp;wf_id=&amp;wf_match=all&amp;wf_model=Wine&amp;wf_name=&amp;wf_order=vintage&amp;wf_order_type=desc&amp;wf_page=1&amp;wf_per_page=25&amp;wf_submitted=true&amp;wf_type=WillFilter%3A%3AFilter&amp;wine_filter%5Barticle_id%5D=2428&amp;wine_filter%5Bproducer_id%5D=3143">See the Wines from Youngest to Oldest</a><hr>You Might Also Enjoy<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/asti-moscato-d-asti-the-delightful-lightness-of-being-dec-2018">Asti &amp; Moscato d'Asti: The Delightful Lightness of Being</a>, Ian D'Agata, December 2018 <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vinous.com/articles/ceretto-barbaresco-asili-1974-2014-dec-2018">Ceretto Barbaresco Asili: 1974-2014</a>, Ian D'Agata, December 2018 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/malvira-roero-arneis-vigna-renesio-2007-2015-oct-2018">Malvirà Roero Arneis Vigna Renesio: 2007 – 2015</a>, Ian D'Agata, October 2018<div><a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/new-releases-from-abruzzo-and-molise-a-mixed-bag-sep-2018">New Releases from Abruzzo and Molise: A Mixed Bag</a>, Ian D'Agata, September 2018</div>

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