Despite three years have passed since the death of Bruno Giacosa, it is still very complicated to talk about the wines of “his” winery, run since 2006 (with roles of increasing importance) by his daughter Bruna, without referring to the figure of this real giant of Langhe enology. Born in 1929, Bruno started very early, at the age of 16, to work in the family business, to help his father Mario who had inherited it from his grandfather Carlo. Bruno was predestined, and this was already evident from his extraordinary sensitivity in reading between the lines the quality of a vineyard or a vintage, thanks to a simple tasting of the grapes at the harvest time. Coincidentally, he wanted these qualities to be intensively trained in his youth when, on behalf of his father, he had the responsibility of choosing and bargaining, with the family winery vine holders, the price of the best and most suitable grapes for winemaking.
This intense “training” was useful to the young Giacosa who, at the age of 31, took control of the family business and began to produce wines with his name on the label. Since the first wines Bruno gave proof of his extraordinary négociant ability until, starting from 1980, he was able to buy, at a high price, vineyards with incredible expressive potential in Barolo and (in 1996) in Barbaresco. Following these acquisitions, the winery began to bottle wines with two separate lines of labels: Azienda Agricola Falletto, which included the most prestigious wines, obtained from own vineyards, and Casa Vinicola Giacosa to indicate the wines produced from grapes purchased from historical and precious vine holders, always vinified in the own cellar.
Roero Arneis DOCG, the apparently most humble product of this second line, is actually a wine that has always been of great importance for the winery, also because its bottles cover about half of the entire production. It is a wine produced from brought grapes, which come from soils rich in sandstone and marl, vinified in order to preserve its freshness, with spontaneous fermentation and subsequent aging of four months in neutral stainless steel tanks, followed by a short aging in bottle, before marketing.
The 2020 vintage shows a medium intensity straw-yellow color, with initial hints of crispy peach nut, kumquat, hawthorn and chlorophyll, progressively enriched by apricot and acacia, with a far silicate echo. In the mouth the acidity enlighten the sip, accompanied by a good sapidity and a hint of softness, necessary not to unbalance the overall taste with, on the background, a fruity-vegetable return that accompanies the discreet length closure.
Rating: 88/100
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