2019 Cieck Erbaluce di Caluso DOCG 750 ml

This wine’s rarity, its phenomenal value, and the fact that it has long been off-limits to all but Piedmont obsessives mean it’s a bargain white that gets us as excited as $150 Barolo or $70 Chianti Classico Riserva.
 

Wines like this harmonious, featherlight beauty would be smuggled home from Piedmont by friends in suitcases, swaddled in T-shirts, in quantities too small to share. We’d save any Cieck Erbaluce di Caluso we could get our hands on for ourselves and friends, savoring the truly magical mineral character it expressed, born from high-altitude hills carved by glaciers.

We’re thrilled we were able to secure 56 cases of this beauty, and we wish we could share this wine in person with you, because even one sip conveys volumes more than the 500 or so words we can fit here. That said, if you buy one bottle, buy two (or better yet, a dozen), because the tenuous supply thread between California and the town of Caluso is one that could break at any time. 

Fans of Chenin Blanc and Arneis will fall for this bottle’s gracefulness and ripping acidity, but here you’ll find a full-bodied fleshiness in addition to ethereal white flower aromatics and steely citrus tang.

In the hands of Cieck, one of the original five producers of the Canavese region, this ancient grape yields a riveting wet-stone energy, as though scooped out of a rushing mountain stream with a tin cup. “Like drinking a dissolved iceberg,” is how one Wine Team member put it, shaking her head in wonderment.

In it too is mountain air scented with native herbs, the hum of bees in its faint kiss of honey sweetness, saline complexity from river soils strewn with fossils. 50-year-old vines, trained on pergola trellises unique to the area, capture all these gorgeous notes in high-definition, low-yield clarity—and in amounts far too small to ever match our appetites.

Italian white wines are mounting an incredible renaissance lately, as youthful scions of multi-generation estates resurrect long-lost varieties and revive abandoned vineyards. They’re improving on the past too, treating grapes with the benefit of clean cellars and modern fermentation techniques, making for world-class wines at bargain prices.

This bottle is one of the greatest success stories of that movement. The Cieck winery was founded in 1985 by Remo Falconieri, as one of the first estates in the area. His daughter Lia, along with Domenico Caretto, now runs the winery, and they have helped raise the modern profile of this distinctive grape to the point that it won its own DOCG in 2010.

The Erbaluce name comes from the words “light” and “grass,” reflecting its herbal complexity and nodding to the sunlight that fosters its slow ripening. The grape’s origins are lost to history, but records of it date back to the 1600s. It grows nowhere in the world but this tiny pocket, like a fragile dialect in danger of being forgotten forever. We, along with Cieck, won’t let that happen, because this expression of glacial soils, rendered in beautiful acidity and freshness, is not just invaluable, but it’s one of our favorites in the Piedmont canon.