Valfaccenda
Luca Faccenda and Carolina Roggero
Piedmont -- Roero DOCG
For too long the Roero zone has been espoused as a substitute for the Nebbiolo wines of Barolo and Barbaresco, their lofty neighbors across the Tanaro River. Just a glance will tell you how different these places really are, and given significant differences in climate and terroir, the comparison is especially unhelpful. Those who work these lands do so not for glamor but because their heritage is at stake: they embrace the expressions of a sand-dominated, aromatic Nebbiolo and that of Arneis’ ancestral home, even as they must endure the difficulties of a rainy, humid land often battered by storms and hail. In all, the work continues because for hundreds of years, families have managed to continue that work, farming vines that express themselves and their place to the fullest.
With Luca in the sands of Valmaggiore, June 2023
Valfaccenda is of course the valley of the Faccendas, where Luca Faccenda is surrounded by others who share his name (geographically immediate but so distant genealogically that it’s not actually clear if they’re related). His family’s estate traces back to at least the mid-18th century, and his commitment to this land is both obvious and effortless. Luca and his partner Carolina returned to the estate in 1986, and after stints across Italy and France, reclaimed their land and began to seek its maximum expression. Made in as transparent and classic a way as possible–organic farming with multiple passes at harvest to preserve acidity, little to no crushing of the grapes, delicate extraction, and long post-fermentation macerations–these bottles, though numbering just a few thousand per year, show exactly what is at stake in the Roero.
