Conterno Monfortino Magnum Vertical: 1970-2014

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | FEBRUARY 02, 2021

With this year’s Festa del Piemonte in full swing I thought it would be fun to revisit one of the highlights from the 2020 edition, our Rare Wine Dinner featuring a stunning vertical of Giacomo Conterno’s Barolo Riserva Monfortino spanning vintages 1970 through 2014. It was truly a night to remember.

The Rare Wine Dinner is a recent addition to our Festa del Barolo, which has now become an expanded Festa del Piemonte in this very strange, ‘virtual’ world we are living in at the moment. These small, intimate dinners focus on a single estate or theme. The first Festa Rare Wine Dinner was a breathtaking retrospective of Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo, all from magnum, going back to 1978. For the 2020 edition of Festa, we hosted a vertical of Giacomo Conterno’s Monfortino, also all from magnum. I would love to say it was a ‘once in a lifetime’ event, but it wasn’t, as we were fortunate to host pretty much the same tasting (minus the more recent vintages) in London back in 2014.

The complete lineup, Monfortino 1970-2014, all from magnum.

A Little History to Start…

A discussion of the Conterno family and their iconic Barolo Riserva Monfortino could easily fill several articles, and it has. Readers will find a wealth of information on both topics on Vinous. Rather than repeat myself too much, always a risk as I get older, I am going to share a few anecdotes that I hope paint a portrait of the family and their signature wine.

Monfortino was first made in 1924 as a Riserva bottled only in the best years. It is one of the most historic wines in Piedmont and Italy. At the time, Monfortino, like most Barolos, was made from purchased fruit. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of record keeping during this era, so it is hard, if not impossible, to reconstruct a lot of the history of where exactly fruit was sourced. Elio Grasso was among the growers who sold grapes to the Conternos. “I remember one year Giovanni Conterno came by to pick up his grapes,” Grasso told me a few years ago. “I was so proud of our fruit. I picked up a bunch to show Conterno and he yelled at me, telling me to never touch the grapes, but to pick up the bunches only by the stems.”

In the 1970s, Giovanni and Yvonne Conterno realized that land prices were going up and that the supply of high-quality grapes would be threatened. Owning vineyard land was the only way to guarantee the future. The Conternos found a property and entered into an agreement to purchase it. On the day of the closing Giovanni asked Yvonne “What if they raise the price at the last minute?” It was a common tactic in these negotiations. “Just come home with the vineyard,” she replied. Surely enough, the seller raised the price, but Conterno agreed and bought the vineyard. The year was 1974, the vineyard was Cascina Francia. Shortly thereafter, the Conternos planted the site, which was fallow at the time. In 1978, the Conternos made their first wines off Cascina Francia, including a Monfortino that is legendary. Today, the estate is run by their son, Roberto, who has built on his parents’ hard work and sacrifice, elevating the family winery to the position it occupies today among the world’s elite properties.

From 1978 to 2014, Monfortino was a selection taken from Cascina Francia, now known simply as ‘Francia.’ In 2015, Conterno acquired the neighboring Arione vineyard and began adding some of that fruit into Monfortino, returning that wine to its roots as a Barolo made from more than one site. Farming and winemaking are best described as rooted in tradition but contemporary. Conterno favors long macerations and 6-7 years in cask for Monfortino. Destemming equipment, quality control for corks, temperature control in the cellar and the bottling line are as state of the art as it gets.