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Meet the Producer


There are not many people who successfully create wines which, on the one hand display incredible, almost clinical attention to detail and on the other have so much soul you find yourself looking for the DOC Motown label on the neck of the bottle. Gianni Selva Bonino does. These are a properly compelling, serious trio of wines from the ancient marine sand soils up in the Alto Piedmont of Coste Della Seisa, around the town of Castellengo. We’re about 10km SW of Gattinara & Ghemme, and “Nebbiolo” is used interchangeably with the local “Spanna”.

Native vines of Vespolina, Nebbiolo & Barbera are grown without herbicides or chemical fertilizers, where Gianni treats each plot as a garden – making micro decisions based on what’s going on in each, rather than a catch all viticultural plan. The wines are made with natural yeasts, aged in large format old botti, and bottled without fining or filtration... So all the good stuff then. Essentially a natural wine, done because that’s how it’s always been done - since the 1700’s in the case of these vineyards! With just 3ha under vine, volumes will sadly always be limited. But because of this, quality suffers no constraints.

The wines are remarkable, and genuinely Piedmontese, matching haunting concentration and ethereal weightlessness. There’s the dried violets and the gnarlier tarry depths that you expect from the Nebbiolo a little further south, but with more approachable tannin and a fresher mouthfeel, and a thread of plump fruit and vicks vapour rub permeates the range.

Wines by Producer