Nervi is a historic, benchmark Gattinara producer, possessing some of the most prized vineyard holdings in all of the appellation. The winery was founded in 1906 by Italo Nervi and is the oldest Cantina in Gattinara. However, many of the vineyards had already been in the family dating back as far as 1679. The estate comprises 28.5 hectares of vineyards, including their top crus of Molsino and Valferana as well as Garavoglie and Casacce. These are historic crus in Gattinara and mentions of Molsino in town records date as far back as 1471, and those of Valferana date back to 1231!
In the 1800s, Gattinara was one of the most important wine-growing areas in Italy, with a reputation for quality. At the end of the 19th century, there were around 4,000 hectares under vine. By the 1960s, that number shrank to around 800 hectares, as people from the area left the instability of agriculture and industrialization took hold. Factories for textiles and faucet manufacturing became big industries, drawing the workforce away from vineyards. Today, only 100 hectares are planted in Gattinara.
Historically, Gattinara was awarded DOC status in 1967 and later upgraded to DOCG in 1990. According to David Lynch and Joe Bastianich’s book, Vino Italiano, “Gattinara represents the purest expression of the northern [Piedmont] zones.” The soil in Gattinara is composed largely of volcanic gravel – remnants of an extinct super-volcano that collapsed 280 million years ago. The gravel is rich in minerals (iron, zinc, magnesium, and manganese) and clay. This volcanic soil imbues a distinct minerality that sets the wines apart from the neighboring appellations of Ghemme, Lessona, and Bramaterra.
For 85 years, the Nervi family built up the reputation of the estate, running it continually until 1991, when a steel magnate named Germano Bocciolone purchased the estate. Twenty years later, in 2011, a group of Norwegian investors led by a passionate wine collector, Erling Astrup, acquired the winery. Astrup endeavored to push the level of quality at Nervi and sought out advice from his longtime friend Roberto Conterno.
In 2018, the group decided to sell the winery and, wanting to see it fall into good hands, felt it was best to offer it first to Roberto Conterno. While Roberto had not been actively seeking out a new winery, the opportunity to acquire such a historic estate with great vineyard holdings of Nebbiolo was too hard to pass up. Gattinara has a very different climate from Barolo, with more precipitation and generally cooler temperatures, being 150 KM further north. Given the current warming climate, Roberto felt this was beneficial for quality in the future. He was also intrigued by the soil differences between the two regions - limestone marls and clay in Barolo and volcanic soils in Gattinara – and how they can yield completely different expressions of Nebbiolo. Gattinara is also close enough to Monforte that Roberto could travel easily between the two areas.
Following the acquisition, Roberto’s aim, working closely with his son Gabriele, was to apply the same fastidious attention to detail and quality to the wines of Nervi-Conterno as he does to those of the Giacomo Conterno estate. As soon as the ink was dry on the purchase, Roberto set about building a beautiful and state-of-the-art winery, which can be seen in the pictures above. They began to dig the new cellar in December 2018, and in the summer of 2019, the operative part of the winery was already completed. The three new projects were all completed by January of 2022. They included the winery with the exact equipment used in Monforte d’Alba at Giacomo Conterno, an extensive wine cellar under the parking lot, and a beautiful restaurant called Cucine Nervi, which offers refined cuisine and a stellar wine list. For this large-scale project, they took ideas that Roberto had developed and refined over decades in the Langhe.
The layout and space of the winery are slightly different from the winery in Barolo, but the concepts for production are the same. Roberto and Gabriele use the same vats for fermentation, the same aging vessels, the same space-age de-stemmers and cork sorters (to essentially remove any trace of cork taint!), and of course, his unique and incredibly precise bottling line.
Gabriele Conterno, Roberto’s eldest son, works closely with his father in all aspects. They also work closely with an impressive team of support they have in each cellar and winery. While they live near the winery in Monforte, they both spend a great deal of time back and forth between there and Gattinara. Gattinara’s proximity to Barolo was, again, one of the key reasons Roberto chose to purchase the Nervi winery.
For the winemaking, the process is very much the same at both estates, with 3-4 week macerations using pump-overs, occasional delestage and submerged cap. Malolactic tends to go slightly quicker in Gattinara than in Monforte, but bottling is the same for both Barolo and Gattinara, between 30-34 months. The cru Gattinara spends an extra year in bottle, whereas the Gattinara classico is released on the 1st of October, the same year it is bottled. Gattinara cannot be released until a minimum of 3 years after the harvest.
The flagship wines at Nervi are their three Gattinara bottlings: Gattinara, Gattinara Molsino, and Gattinara Valferana. The two single-vineyard bottlings contain the best fruit from those vineyards. Molsino, a south-facing amphitheater, tends to ripen earlier and is an overall bigger wine, whereas Valferana sees less sun, ripens somewhat later, and tends more towards elegance. The third bottling contains the best fruit from Garavoglie and Casacce as well as some wine declassified from Molsino and Valferana. In addition to the three Gattinara, Nervi-Conterno makes a delicious and vibrant Rosato from 100% Nebbiolo from the nearby Colline Novaresi, as well as tiny quantities of a refined and elegant Méthode Champenoise sparkling wine called Jefferson with a slightly pink hue, also from 100% Nebbiolo.
Interestingly, when tasting the wines of Nervi-Conterno, Roberto prefers to show the wines side-by-side with his Baroli to illustrate that they can clearly hold their own with the pedigreed wines of Conterno Barolo. The Gattinaras are definitely NOT the “little siblings” and are often presented after Barolo in the tasting order, depending on the year! As Antonio Galloni says, “some vintages favor one appellation over another [but] the wines from the two estates can absolutely stand side-by-side”.
In sum, the Conterno name is synonymous with exceptional quality. With enormous investment in Gattinara at Nervi-Conterno, the family, padre e figlio, have created a new reference point for the appellation and inspired winemakers from Piedmont and beyond to explore this extraordinary region.