Azienda Agricola Matteo Correggia - Canale, Italy

Our most recent tasting at the Correggia’s.

30 YEARS OF WINES AND MEMORIES

1991. On a warm summer day in La Morra, in the primetime heart of Barolo country, following a visit and tasting with Elio Altare in preparing to leave, I ask - “Elio, who is a young producer you know making wonderful wines that probably no one has heard of?”

With a smile he immediately says “Matteo Correggia!”

I say “who?”

“He is a young guy doing great work. Do you want to meet him?”

The next thing I know he’s picked up a telephone and is calling in those days they had telephones with cords connected to them! After a short chat Elio is off the phone and says “let’s go”. I ask him where we are headed and he says:

“Canale!”

“What?”

“Canale!!”

”Where’s that?”

Within 10 minutes I’m following Elio in my car driving faster than I ever would on my own. Elio is like that, he does everything fast and driving a car around his twisty terroir is certainly no exception.

After about 15 minutes - midway to our drive - he pulls off to the side of the road, quickly gets out of his car and gesturing up to some clouds in the distance “grandinare! helluh!” He is showing me those clouds; they are clouds of hail (“helluh”) that are ripping through some neighbors nebbiolo and barbera vines. Summertime in Piemonte - hot sun and hail…

We pull into a courtyard with a house and winery amongst beautiful vineyards in the hills a little bit outside of the town of Canale. The first thing - the large dog rumbling over, and shortly after a door opens and his mama comes over - Matteo‘s mother - as she and Elio exchange familial hugs of joy.

Then, there is Matteo: handsome, sturdy, youthful, grinning - the handshake warm, that of a man who clearly engaged with the soil. 1991 it is.

Sadly, in 2001 Matteo - generous, brilliant, cheerful, passionate and dedicated - passed away far too early. His legacy is ever growing to this day.

We could write a book about the Correggia legacy (and we might), but for now we will tell you about the new wines finally arriving. Azienda Correggia is in Canale, in the Roero district of southern Piedmont (north of Alba and Barolo). Nearly exclusively, the initial building of the region's reputation stemmed from the late Matteo Correggia’s visionary view on his vineyards in Roero - historically the second fiddle in Piedmont to big-time Barolo and Barbaresco. Raising the profile on both Nebbiolo and Barbera, the proof was presented that high quality wines could be produced in the zone, and then too he showed the potential of Sauvignon Blanc from plantings his neighbors first laughed at…

Team E&R made its first of perhaps a dozen visits there in 1991, when hardly anyone knew the region or producer; and certainly few cared to. It was love at first taste. We knew it in a heartbeat. We’ve had a long history with them carried on the shop with annual offerings, tastings and visits. Their wines are consistently fine and are the epitome of value these days.

For those who say that there are no deals in Piedmont, investigate these wines. For those who say the wines of the Roero cannot compete with the heavyweights in Barbaresco and Barolo, we ask you to try these.

As we noted in one of our E&R Wine Explorers years ago about a newly arrived bottling of Correggia's Nebbiolo Val di Preti: "buy a $60 Barbaresco, wait ten years, and it will taste like this wine does now…”

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