Iuli, Nebbiolo "Malidea" 2017

If you want to know what single-site Nebbiolo tastes like from some of the best bits of Piemonte, but don't have the funds for Barolo or Barbaresco, step right this way!

This delicious wine is made from grapes grown on a hill called Malidea that separates Iuli's Barbera from the Nebbiollo vineyards. The word means "bad idea" which of course is nonsense, but appealed to Fabrizio's sense of humour! The wine is velvety smooth and complex, showing red berry and cherry notes. There is also the freshness that comes from this sub-region, but this has been kept in check by two years of aging in large oak barrels.

The sub-zone of Montaldo di Cerrina is almost exclusively situated on a thin strip of limestone soils, which is what Fabrizio Iuli believes gives his wine the ability to show their quality in the highest and most natural of manners. This allows for the grapes to be really complex, aromatic and expressive without depending on the use of barriques to add structure. Indeed, Iuli only uses stainless steel, concrete or old, wooden neutral vats in order to allow the prized fruit to show at it's most pure. And that is the result that you find in the wine - it is subtle, complex but joyful and easy to drink.

Monferrato is a large area in the Langhe and includes the amazing Barbera-producing zones of Nizza and Asti. The ficus of these two regions means that Montaldo di Cerrina really operates as an agricultural backwater. There has never been much money amongst these farmers, so investments are sparse and because of this, chemicals have never been used and as a result all the vineyards are organic. And always have been.

What Iuli has managed is wonderful - he has brought together other growers to form a co-operative that originally produced wines in the Monferrato DOC, which is really quite posh. But as with so many things Italian the bureaucracy drove him mad and now all the wines are labelled as Vino da Tavola - simply table wines. In a funny way, that's really appropriate because the wines are so good with food!

A Malidea? Not a bit of it!