I'm not yet so established as a wine writer that I don't still feel a residual bit of outsidery shame at contacting estates and asking busy winemakers to make time for someone with no purchasing power. Writing about wine estates can do them a valuable service - I wouldn't do it if I didn't believe this - but the estates that interest me most are rarely those that need much promotion. As such, in preparing for our Piedmont sojourn, I just sent a carpetbomb of emails to the region's most interesting winemakers, explaining that I was a wine writer traveling with my friend J, an actual wine buyer, and asking could we perhaps pop in for a visit?
To my disappointment, I received no response from the Luigi Ferrando estate, by whom we were to pass on our car journey from Sierre to Monforte. Ferrando produce arguably the greatest Nebbiolo outside of Barolo or Barbaresco, under an appellation called Carema in the Canavese, a psychotically steep alpine region abutting the Valle d'Aosta. Both J and I had previously had notable success selling these wines in California, where they're distributed by Neal Rosenthal.
It was a good thing J had the good sense to just phone up the estate with almost zero notice from where we stayed in Switzerland, non parlo italiano be damned. We wound up with an appointment the next day, not with current winemaker Roberto Ferrando, who had just left for vacation, but with his father, the man himself, Luigi Ferrando.
