Matteo Correggia - Roche D'Ampsej 2003 Ml. 750

When Matteo Correggia inherited his father’s estate in 1985, the wine-growing boom was a long way off, and farmers on the left bank of the river Tanaro grew fruit and vegetables alongside vines that were used for making wine for a few close friends.
Matteo was a young farmer who was very keen on wine growing. He decided that his project was simple and for this reason, he would not give up. Making not just producing wines to be remembered: this is what he was going to do.
It wasn’t an easy decision. Making wines of absolute quality, in a region that was still underestimated because it was misunderstood seemed wishful thinking to many.
The reality was hard and there was a lot of local prejudice. But Matteo didn’t listen to those who said that the Roero could not produce good wines, and who condemned the new techniques.
When destiny chose to deprive the family and the Roero of Matteo in 2001, he had already completed his new wine cellars, gained international recognition, won sereval awards, met the world’s most important wine makers and, at the same time, kept firm roots with his own region.
Matteo’s connection to this land is written in the stars. In 2000 the name Roero was given to asteroid 8,075, discovered by the American astronomer Bowel: a small piece of rock, about 15 km across, with an orbit very similar to that of another asteriod, number 13,917, named after Matteo. And so it is that Roero and Matteo Correggia, forever together, travel the firmament, perpetuating their shared destinies.
The Roero
It might seem strange, but the Roero, in the south of Piedmont, owes its vocation for wine growing to the sea and the river Tanaro. Million of years ago, salty water reached the Alps, before progressively going back and leaving enormous deposits of sands behind it, interspersed with compact and impermeable marlstones together with all the fossils they carried. What had been backdrop has become lowlands and valleys.
Despite being very near, the Roero is geologically much younger than the Langhe and it would certainly not be the same without the River Tanaro two hundred thousand years ago, it diverted from its original course, broke out into the lowlands to the south.
This gigantic flood dug out the Rocche, the deep canyon that runs from Bra to Montà in a straight line 12 kms long. An extraordinary part of geological history, unique natural habitats and dizzy abysses all reveal the composition of this land.
The combination of chance, sea and flooding of the Tanaro, together with millions of years of erosion, due to atmospheric agents, have resulted in the Roero having an extraordinary variety of microclimates and soils which consist mainly of sandy layers.
Geology explains the subtle differences between the Roero wines produced from the same grape varieties, because the only thing that this land cannot give are reassuring standard wines each one is unique and can become extraordinary.

VINEYARDS

With grapes produced in over 20 hectares of vineyards and managed personally, the Matteo Correggia Concern produces a wide range of wines. The wines are naturally the products of the ground where grapevines put down their roots: sandy ground that has little clay or silt and is very loose and therefore extremely suitable to produce rich and refined bouquets.
The Nebbiolo and Barbera grapes used to produce La Val dei Preti and Barbera Marun come from the vineyards having a southern exposure and placed between Santo Stefano Roero and Canale. Less exposed slopes, on the other hand, give body to the fruit scents of the Brachetto and Arneis grapes. While the large, steep vineyard, looking out onto the uncontaminated Rocche, gives to the Roero DOCG Riserva Ròche d’Ampsèj, its complex scents.
Alongside these wines that represent a genuine part of the local tradition are the challenges of the Concern looking for the new opportunities given by the Sauvignon blanc and the international red grape varieties.
Wine making takes place in modern wine cellars, in stainless steel vats at controlled temperature, while ageing is done in the large rooms created under a hill, in contact with the fossil rich millennial marlstones, that give them the dampness and quietness necessary as the perfect compliment to the whole process in the vineyards and wine cellars. The barrels are carefully selected for the wines they will host, and gradually replaced according to a twenty-years practice. The bottles are decorated with paintings by Coco Cano depicting the gentle slopes planted with vines and bathed by the Roero’s hot sun, in keeping with Matteo Correggia Concern tradition.