Malcolm Jolley talks to Andrea Pace about the iconic Barbaresco wines of Castello di Neive.
Andrea Pace of Castello di Neive, Barbaresco in Toronto, October 2018.
The name of the winery, Castello di Neive, literally means (as one might guess) the castle of Neive. Neive is one of the three villages in the Barbaresco DOCG, and has been home to the Stupino family for generations. A recent generation of the family is Italo Stupino, who is still very much a force at Castello di Neive, and was even more so a force in the Piedmont wine revolution that saw Barbaresco emerge as one of the great, and sought after, wines of Italy. And yet, despite Castello di Neive’s rich history, and a couple of visits to the region in the last few years, I didn’t know much about the wines until I spoke with its marketing man, Andre Pace. In the video interview below, Andrea discusses Castello di Neive’s enviable position as a landholder in Barbaresco, where they command some of the prime vineyards, as a result of decades of careful acquisition engineered by the Stupino family.
And what about the wine? I tasted with Andrea earlier and it’s old school, or at least the Barbaresco is, especially the 2015, which is available now ($28.30 – LCBO# 160143), full of dark cherry and hints of black fruit held up by a firm tannic structure. The 2016 ‘Montebertotto’ Arneis d’Alba is named after the vineyard that Italo Stupino planted with different clones of the grape in the 1970’s as part of a project in collaboration with the University of Turin to bring Arneis back from extinction, and it’s profile is also (what is now) consider classic: a touch of aromatics over a firm stone fruit base. (It’s also available in Ontario, at $29.95, by consignment orders through Castello di Neive’s agent, The Case For Wine.) These wines and more are discussed in our conversation…
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