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Two decades in the fog
For two decades now, we at Passione Vino have been tasting, chasing, and quietly falling for Nebbiolo in every shape it comes in. It has taken us up single-track roads into the hills of Alto Piemonte, a corner of Piedmont almost nobody visits on purpose, onto the terraced walls of Valtellina where the vineyards look more like architecture than agriculture, and into small, smoke-warmed bars in Alba where a glass of last year’s Nebbiolo d’Alba arrives before you’ve finished asking for it. We have drunk it young and defiant, old and inebriatingly perfumed, from producers who talk about their vines the way other people talk about their children.
This grape has a way of humbling everyone who thinks they’ve finally understood it, and that, more than anything, is why we keep going back.
What’s in a name
Nebbiolo is thought to take its name from nebbia, the Italian word for fog, though nobody agrees on quite why. The most romantic explanation points to the harvest itself: Nebbiolo ripens late, often not picked until well into October, exactly when thick autumn mists settle over the Langhe hills each morning. 
The more technical explanation looks instead at the grape itself, whose skins develop a pale, dusty bloom called pruina as they ripen — a light, foggy-looking coating that may have given the variety its name long before anyone thought about harvest weather at all. A third theory skips fog altogether and points to the Italian nobile — noble — a grape fit only for noble, aristocratic wines. It’s not a hard case to make: Barolo and Barbaresco are still called the king and queen of Italian wine, a reputation as obvious today as it ever was.
Either way, the first explicit mention of the grape dates to 1268, when a wine called nibiol was recorded growing in Rivoli, near Turin, which gives Nebbiolo more than seven centuries of history behind it.
One grape, four names
Travel through Nebbiolo’s various homes and you’ll notice the grape rarely goes by the same name twice.
| Region | Local name | Where it’s grown | Try one |
|---|---|---|---|
| Langhe & Roero | Nebbiolo | Barolo, Barbaresco, Roero | Piero Rossi Cairo, Langhe Nebbiolo 2023 |
| Valtellina, Lombardy | Chiavennasca | Steep terraces above the Adda river | Dirupi, Valtellina Superiore 2022 |
| Valle d’Aosta | Picotendro | High mountain vineyards along the Dora Baltea | Selve, Picotendro “Rovere” 2017 |
| Alto Piemonte | Spanna | Gattinara, Ghemme, Boca, Bramaterra, Lessona | Paride Chiovini, Ghemme 2017 |
In the Langhe and Roero, it’s simply Nebbiolo — the name behind Barolo, Barbaresco, and Roero itself. Head north into Valtellina, in Lombardy, where the vines climb steep terraces above the Adda river, and it becomes Chiavennasca. Higher still, among the high mountain vineyards of Valle d’Aosta along the Dora Baltea, growers call it Picotendro. And across Alto Piemonte — Gattinara, Ghemme, Boca, Bramaterra, Lessona — it goes by Spanna.
Four names, one grape, and an entire geography of different soils, altitudes, and hands shaping what ends up in the glass.
The many wines of Nebbiolo
Nowhere does Nebbiolo speak with more authority than in Barolo, the wine that won over the nobility of Turin and the House of Savoy and earned the nickname “the wine of kings, the king of wines.” Grown across communes like La Morra, Monforte d’Alba, Serralunga d’Alba, and Cherasco, Barolo demands patience — the tannins are real, the ageing requirements are long, and the reward is a wine that can still be finding its feet twenty years on.
Start with: Piero Rossi Cairo, Barolo di Serralunga d’Alba 2021 · Benevelli, Barolo Le Coste di Monforte 2020 · Conterno Fantino, Barolo Vigna del Gris 2020
A short drive northeast, Barbaresco tends to arrive at its best a little sooner, often read as the more perfumed, more approachable sibling, though anyone who’s tasted a great one knows “approachable” only tells half the story.
Start with: La Ca’ Nova, Barbaresco 2022 · Ronchi, Barbaresco 2022 · Cascina delle Rose, Barbaresco Rio Sordo 2022
For everyday drinking, Langhe Nebbiolo and Roero offer the same DNA in a lighter key — fresher, more immediate, often from younger vines or sandier soils across the river, and no less honest an expression of the grape for it.
Start with: Piero Rossi Cairo, Langhe Nebbiolo 2023 · Alberto Oggero, Roero Anime 2023 · Benevelli, Nebbiolo d’Alba 2023
Further north, Alto Piemonte’s Spanna wines are a different animal. The hills of Gattinara and Ghemme are built on acidic porphyry, a volcanic rock, rather than the Langhe’s old seabed, which gives the wines a leaner, more mineral edge. Producers often blend in a touch of Vespolina or Uva Rara, and the result suits anyone who loves Nebbiolo but finds Barolo’s power a bit much.
Start with: Paride Chiovini, Ghemme 2017
And Nebbiolo keeps surprising elsewhere too: in Valtellina it’s coaxed into Sforzato, a rich, dried-grape wine built for the coldest nights, and in Valle d’Aosta’s Picotendro it takes on an almost mountain-herb clarity.
Start with: Sandro Fay, Ronco del Picchio Sforzato 2022 · Marino Lanzini, Sforzato di Valtellina 2021 · Dirupi, Valtellina Superiore 2022 · Selve, Picotendro “Rovere” 2017
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Our Nebbiolo family
Across over two decades of building this portfolio, we’ve gathered growers who between them cover nearly every one of these expressions — from the grand communes of Barolo to the quieter hills of Alto Piemonte, the terraces of Valtellina and the high vineyards of Valle d’Aosta.
Barolo & the Langhe communes
- Piero Benevelli — Monforte d’Alba
- Conterno Fantino — Monforte d’Alba
- Orlando Rocca — Monforte d’Alba
- Elio Sandri, Cascina Disa — Monforte d’Alba
- Piero Rossi Cairo — Serralunga d’Alba
- Sergio Molino — La Morra
- Prandi — La Morra
- Santa Maria— La Morra
- Eraldo Viberti— La Morra
- Umberto Fracassi — Cherasco
Barbaresco
- La Ca'nova — Barbaresco
- Cascina Delle Rose — Barbaresco
- Franco Rocca, Cantina del Brichetto — Barbaresco
- Ronchi — Barbaresco
Roero
Alto Piemonte — Spanna country
- Paride Chiovini— Ghemme
- Paride Iaretti — Gattinara
Valtellina — Chiavennasca country
Valle d’Aosta — Picotendro country
- Selve — Valle d’Aosta
Twenty-two growers, six zones, and one grape running through all of it — proof that Nebbiolo is less a single wine than a whole language, spoken in a different accent on every hillside.
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