Francesco Versio

Francesco is young but an acknowledged savant of winemaking, having worked at Bruno Giacosa alongside Dante Scaglione, as well as currently being the day-to-day winemaker for Figli Luigi Oddero, where we first met. Despite his youth, he has–and his wines exhibit–an intense focus on clarity and transparency. How fitting then that Barbaresco, land of some of the most transparent Nebbiolo on earth, is his family’s home.

Alongside these larger projects where he has gained deep insight into the various subzones of the Langhe, Francesco is dedicated to this tiny project, centered on Barbaresco, but producing less than 10,000 bottles per year. Now just over a decade into the work of farming and vinifying his grandfather’s plots in San Cristoforo and Currà in the Nieve subzone of Barbaresco, Francesco has now added small plots from the Starderi MGA alongside a beautiful set of Dogliani vineyards primarily for Dolcetto.

Though just a decade into vinifying his family’s own fruit from the Nieve zone, the wines exude classicism and detail, with a notable depth of fruit in his Nebbiolo that cannot help but remind of the historic wines of Giacosa. As with his colleagues and forebears, fermentations are spontaneous, and only large Slavonian oak is used. Likely to always be small in volume, we are no less exuberant about the prospects for the quality of these wines–already superb but whose outlook is so bright.