Calosso DOC: the rediscovery of Gamba di Pernice

The production area includes Calosso, Costigliole d’Econo Asti and Castagnole delle Lanze. These three names offer an immediate geography, close to landscapes already known through Moscato and Barbera. The denomination invites you to look at the same side with a new question: what other grapes keep their history among the rows?

The village of Calosso allows you to start from a crop center and widen your gaze on the countryside. Costigliole adds the relationship between castle, inhabited and cultivated reliefs; Castagnole delle Lanze offers another stage in the route. The journey can alternate walks in the villages and links between the hills. The continuity of the landscape makes visible the proximity of the places, while the name of each municipality retains its own recognizability.

The recognition of DOC in 2011 gave a territorial name to the valorization of the Red Leg. The variety was present in the area and had risked disappearing; the work of producers brought it back to the center of an enological project. This story shows a concrete dimension of biodiversity: a vine continues to exist when it finds space in the vineyards, attention in cultivation and an audience capable of knowing it.

The rarity thus becomes an opportunity to meet with agricultural history. Behind a bottle there is the decision to preserve a varietal heritage and transform it into a recognizable wine. In Calosso this story is part of a campaign rich in productions. Exploration allows us to understand how a small name can add a significant towel to the larger picture of the Astian viticulture.

The disciplinary puts the Red Leg at the centre of the ampelographic base, with a quota from 90 to 100%. The variety therefore offers the main reference to know Calosso. The comparison with wines obtained from the most common grapes of the area helps to grasp the sense of this choice: the territory preserves more items and each grape gives a different direction to the work of the winery.

During the tasting, he observes the relationship between perfumes, consistency and persistence. The curiosity for a rare grape can become an attentive tasting, guided by the story of the producer on the vineyard and wine making. It is a way to pass from the unusual name to a concrete experience. The bottle takes meaning when it is connected to the yarns visited and the choices needed to keep cultivation alive.

A table with first tasty meats and cheeses allows you to approach the Calosso as part of a convivivial experience. The dish offers a context to read the wine and follow its change in the glass. You can dedicate the day to this name and then resume, on a later visit, the most famous productions of the same hills. The route becomes a progressive exploration of the local variety.

The Moscato d’Asti and the Barbera d’Asti open two particularly interesting comparisons. The first leads to the aromatic world of white grapes, the second towards one of the great red presences of Astigiano. The Calosso adds to these names a history collected, linked to the rediscovery of a vine and the ability of countries to preserve differences.

Before leaving Calosso, he dedicates a stop to the rural landscape that surrounds the village. It is the frame in which to place this small name, next to other crops and roads that join the three municipalities.