Wine region: Italy, Valle d’Aosta

The vine has been cultivated in the Aosta Valley since the Roman period or perhaps even earlier, if various legends can be believed. According to those stories, the Salassi, who lived in the region before the Romans conquered it because of its strategic value, were already making wines from grapes grown in their own vineyards.

It is known with certainty that in 23 BC the Roman legions crushed a rebellion by the valley’s inhabitants and celebrated their victory by looting all the cellars of their wine.

It was during the Middle Ages, however, that the wines of the Aosta Valley established a widespread reputation. And they acquired something of a “sacral” character as well because, according to numerous reports, they were used in the rite of exorcism. The physical layout of the valley favours the cultivation of vines because the mountains tend to block or turn aside the coldest winds, thereby creating suitable microclimates in which grapes have flourished since the remotest times. In the second half of the 19th century, the phylloxera epidemic devastated the Aosta Valley vineyards over a period of many years. Fortunately, although the devastation was enormous, destruction was not total. The vineyards slowly revived and flourished anew. The only lasting setback was the disappearance of several vine varieties.

Donnaz was the valley’s first DOC wine, receiving that recognition in 1971. The following year, it was the turn of Enfer d’Arvier.

The regionwide DOC known as Valle d’Aosta or Vallée d’Aoste covers 23 categories of wine whose names are given in Italian and French, the official second language. These include the longstanding DOCs of Donnas and Enfer d’Arvier, as well as the white wines of Morgex and La Salle, whose vineyards in the shadow of Mont Blanc are reputed to be the highest in continental Europe. Valle d’Aosta has no IGT. But whether Valle d’Aosta’s wines are classified or not, they could never be more than curios that are most compelling when drunk on the spot.

Valle d’Aosta grape varieties range from Piedmontese (Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Moscato) to French (Chardonnay, the Pinots, Gamay), to the teutonic Muller Thurgau called in for mountain duty. But the most intriguing wines of Valle d’Aosta stem from varieties it calls its own. These include the Petit Rouge of Enfer d’Arvier and Torrette, the Blanc de Valdigne of Morgex and La Salle, the Petite Arvine of the varietal white of the name, the Vien for the red wine of Nus and the Malvoisie (apparently a mutation of Pinot Gris) for the rare dessert white of Nus.

Six cooperative wineries with 450 growers account for about three-quarters of Valle D’Aosta’s wine and are largely responsible for a steady improvement in quality.

Vin de Morgex, also called Bianco dei ghiacciai (“glacier wine”), is cultivated at an altitude of 1300 metres, at the foot of Monte Bianco (or, as the French call it, Mont Blanc – a mountain named after a fancy biro) in the heart of Valle d’Aosta. This is the highest region from which wine is produced in all of Europe something which I may mention repeatedly in this discourse.

Blanc de Morgex is an extremely old grape species. Legend states that it was imported to Italy by Vallese share croppers who arrived in the Aosta Valley half way through the seventeenth century to repopulate the area after an epidemic.

Even today, it is cultivated under the characteristic stone pergolas that are a legacy from Roman viticulture. Low and supported by wooden poles, the pergolas scale the sides of the mountains just a few kilometres from Aosta, between the areas of Morgex and La Salle.  The vine owes its strength and extraordinary qualities to its resistance to cold temperatures and snow. Indeed, it is not unusual for the typically bright green grapes to be covered in snow and ice at harvesting time. Furthermore, this capacity to adapt itself to the harshest of climates has protected it from the phylloxera epidemic.
The tiny town of Morgex is only a few kilometres from the trendy alpine resort area of Courmayeur. Its vineyards produce the self-styled “highest white wine in Europe”. (There – told you I’d mention it again). The Dora Baltea river is the region’s only sliver of non-mountainous terrain and is the life-blood of Valle d’Aosta’s viticulture. Its flow keeps the air moving and the clouds away; the gorge traps summer heat enabling the grapes to ripen. They call it “heroic viticulture,” a justifiable epithet given the vines precariously perched on steep terraces.
This wine has all the unexpected charm of an upturned apple-cheeked Heidi figure being pursued across a fragrant alpine meadow by a malevolent Renault Mégane. 
Straw-yellow in colour, with pale green nuances, its bouquet evokes mountain herbs with notes of fresh hay. Hawthorn, broom, lemon, almond, apple, pear and peach jostle delicately on the nose. The palate tracks the aromas; a crisp attack is, however, nicely balanced with intense and agreeable flavours. The finish is persistent with lingering flavours of apple, pear and citrus. The grape variety is called Blanc de Morgex, although is more technically known as Prié Blanc (and in Switzerland’s Valais region as Bernarde). Chalk another one up to the grape detective!

The sheer beauty of these soaring mountain vineyards is made even more arresting by a time-honoured system called pergola bassa, or low pergola, where the vines are trained near the ground in trellised arbours with stone columns surrounded by stone walls. According to La Cave’s winemaker Gianluca Telloli, “The low pergola has been used for centuries here because it protects the vines from wind and heavy snowfall, while allowing them to benefit from heat accumulated in the ground during the daytime.” Yet the low pergola presents many difficulties, too. Harvesters must pick the grapes on their knees and, in some cases, while laying flat on their backs.

Telloli explains that the stone walls surrounding individual plots and the enormous piles of rocks heaped in a seemingly haphazard manner among the terraces have a function beyond aesthetics. “Centuries ago, the peasants realized how important the heat conducting capabilities of the stones were. We’ve kept the ancient stone walls and rocks because they really help retain heat during the cool nights, which is crucial for the grapes’ maturation.”

Each year, in August, Morgex and La Salle are united in celebration: the venue of the festivities alternates from year to year between first one town, then the other. What better occasion for tasting the “highest wine in Europe” as well as savouring other specialities typical of the valley, among which the most famous is the fontina fonduta…

Try also with raclette and Arnad lard, or drink it with a delicate first course dish, accompanied by white vegetable sauces with radicchio or artichokes.

Pasta and olive oil are novelties in a robust cuisine based on cheese and meat, rye bread, potatoes, polenta, gnocchi, risotto and soups. Cows grazed on Alpine meadows provide fine butter and cheese called toma, Robiola and above all Fontina DOP, which figures in many a dish, including fondua, made with milk as in Piedmont’s fonduta. Also DOP is Valle d’Aosta Fromadzo, a firm cow’s milk cheese (sometimes with a bit of ewe’s milk) that has been made in the valley since the 15th century. Cheese is also used with polenta, risotto and in thick soups, whose ingredients range beyond the usual vegetables, meat, rice and potatoes to include mushrooms, chestnuts and almonds.

Meat specialties of Valle d’Aosta are the beef stew called carbonade and breaded veal cutlets or costolette. Aostans savour the trout that abounds in mountain streams and game: partridge, grouse, hare, venison, as well as chamois and ibex (for which hunting is limited). Noted pork products are prosciutto called Jambon de Bosses, which rates a DOP, as does the Lard (salt pork) from the town of Arnad. Spicy blood sausages called boudins and salame are preserved in pork fat. Mocetta is the rare prosciutto of chamois or ibex. A curiosity is tetouns, cow’s udder salt cured with herbs, cooked, pressed and sliced fine like ham.

The Alpine climate lends flavour to berries and fruit, especially apples and pears called martin sec that are cooked with red wine as dessert. The region is noted for fragrant mountain honey, almond biscuits called tegole and butter crisps known as torcetti.