La Vrille - Vallée d'Aoste, Italy
Hervé of La Vrille from our most recent visit to the Vallée d’Aosta May 2022.
Editor’s note: Friends, we beg your indulgence with this introduction. “The First Intro” is from our 2008 “E&R Wine Explorer and Italy Review, Holiday Issue.” (Remember good old paper newsletters?) We are now reiterating our promise from 2008 - last line below… Perhaps you recall? To those who have waited, we appreciate your patience. Sometimes things go slower than expected!
THE FIRST INTRO
VALLEE D’AOSTE/VERRAYES: GOOD LUCK
AT THE UFFICIO POSTALE (OCTOBER, 2008)
La Clusaz is one of the coolest hotel-restaurants in Italy. Find it tucked away, double-loop-stitched above the hip town of Aosta. Try their chestnut pie, risotto and barley, the poached eggs, the bread soup with fontina baked in an oven and the little rooms above the joint with views across the hills as steep as the arc of a rock falling off your roof.
The two of us ordered four bottles of wine from the impressively unfamiliar listings (always order locally in Italy): sparkling Morgex, Enfer, Cornalin, wines like that — those like no others in the wine world.
Though we had plans for the next day, the Cornalin (red grape) bottle from an unknown producer (nice combo: unknown grape, unknown appellation, unknown producer) was so spectacular, an unscheduled visit to the winery the next morning was immediately put on the agenda.
Ufficio Postale, Verrayes, Italy. (telephono - +39016643102)
No one really knew where the winery was.
We had a vague idea it was somewhere around the town of Verrayes, which is like saying the nickel you are searching for is on the baseball field… You are always close. After driving twice on every conceivable tiny back road (except one) amongst the remarkable, steep hills and slopes coming off the Alpine Brenner Pass, we decided to stop in a tiny Ufficio Postale, in a little hamlet - Verrayes.
This was an “everybody knows everybody and their entire family-tree place.” Each of the three customers ahead of us proceeded to relay their life stories at a hectically slow motion pace. Transactions took place as we waited - it was a bank, little children were told stories as we waited, it was a one room school house, people were getting advice on the pinging sound under the hoods of their cars as we waited, cousins exchanged cabbage soup recipes as we waited, people spoke of the new snow plows due in next month as we waited, the President of the United States was mentioned as we waited. And us? We endured as we waited, and at times feel we are waiting still.
So if anyone will have a local address, well wouldn’t it be the Uffico Postale? Or this, the local bank, or this school house, or from the cadre of local historians? On top of that, this Ufficio Postale seemed quite apt at multitasking.
After about six new rings were formed on the outside pines, we got to the Señora in charge of the place and asked about the address - which was included along with both the name of the person we sought out and the name of the winery. The Señora on the beat looked at us like we were from, say a town 2 km away! “Who” she said.
Here is where fate (whatever that is) tickles you: a quiet young woman behind says “ah, viva a destra la!” Huh? En francais? (isn’t everyone supposed to speak French here), and so we discover she lives right nearby, and off we go, to a place we would have never found in the lifetimes of a herd of cats.
A Frenchman moves to Italy, works at a local co-op, helping make it famous and then just three years ago decided to make his own wine. Nice move!
Now reader, you sit tight for these lovely wines. You’ll see. You’ll taste.
(11/2008)
Herbs a La Vrille.
One vine.
Having waited 13 years for these wines to arrive, we HAD to open one when they came in the door. It was so great we opened another - and another, and what the heck, we opened all five. Preceding each wine below are immediate off-the-cuff comments on each wine.
“Oh, it’s the stuff of dreams”
(Notes below on prior vintages, current available wines are below)
Vallée d’Aoste DOC “Chambave Muscat” 2018
Glorious juice: dry, floral, persistent, engaging and flat out tasty. The grape is Muscat Petits Grain, the oldest of the Muscat family of grapes and seen as the most characterful of the family tree. As Hervé notes - fine, aromatic, floral, fruity. They recognize each other apricot, sage, thyme and peach. The wine is aged in steel for eight months and then bottled for further aging. Complex, soft-textured, talc, rich and as Laura noted, it is a bit sauvignon blanc like, indeed, a fabulous white. Great acidity - you just want to drink it. $32
“Oh yum! Very late summer in its fruitiness.”
Vallée d’Aoste DOC “Cornalin” 2016
One of the two greatest indigenous grapes of Aosta (see fumin below), the ancient Cornalin grape produces a red wine rarely seen these days. Used sparingly in blends, Cornalin bordered on extinction until a small band of talented winemakers realized its impressive stand-alone potential. This bottling sees only stainless steel, and Hervé and company call it this way: “Intense ruby red with violet reflections, intense, good persistence, spicy, with hints of mountain herbs - a dry wine, with good freshness, it features soft tannins.” Production, like all the La Vrille wines, is very small. Chewy, opulent, darker-colored - leaning toward a black cherry color in the center of the glass (a good place to shoot for). $29
“OMG, how cool is that??”
Vallée d’Aoste DOC “Vuillermin” 2017
Our first bottling of 100% Vuillermin: hardly anyone makes one, and then, getting to Oregon is another matter. When this grape had been used, it ended up an element of a blend, thus its future was as the ninth life of the cat. Vuillermin, believed to be an offspring of Fumin (see below) has literally been saved at the last minute from extinction. This is brilliant stuff. Like all five of the La Vrille wines, Vuilermin’s vineyard is of glacial deposits. This moraine terroir, gives each wine its own sharply individual character. Filled with earthy-fruity-mildly-gamey fruit, it is sort of like it is from a deep, dark terroir rather than sand and stone in view of snow-capped mountains all year. It owns a concentrated nose of rose petals, bramble and berry, some chocolate and the hint of the scent of raw honey. This stony, complex red defies category - outside of thrilling. $38
“We’re going someplace else here!”
“Brooding, armchair wine…”
Vallée d’Aoste DOC “Fumin” 2014
Over recent years, or the twenty two plus we’ve been writing about wine, if any red grape from Vallée d’Aoste (Valle d’Aosta in Italian.) has emerged as a kind of standard bearer, it is Fumin. Dense and gripping, Fumin is native to these vines in the shadow of Mt. Blanc (more like Mt Rouge). The 2014 Fumin is a burly wine of real power - yet not tannic power. It displays notes of white pepper and cloves wedded in a rustic berry essence. Wisely, the wine has been left in bottle for some time before release - it is full throttle ready right now. $37
(E)
When in stock, wines from this producer appear below. Click each wine for more detail.
