Scarpa
Scarpa La Bogliona is the estate's most important wine.
Every now and then someone stands up at lunch and makes the mundane seem extraordinary. This happened recently with Aldo di Filippo, who was in Australia to represent Piedmont producer Scarpa. The early wines had been served when Aldo stood up and said, “At Scarpa, we don’t want structure. We don’t want complexity.”
I smiled on hearing this, I admit, and I did because I’m human. I’ve been writing about wine for nearly 25 years and in all that time I’ve never heard a winery representative emphasise any such thing; the usual message is, of course, exactly the opposite. This though is the kind of thing you can say when all you’ve ever known, for all your wine existence, is structure and complexity. In Piedmont, if you’re half decent, structure and complexity are a given. The focus, then, is allowed to shift to the philosophy of what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, onto why.
“We are in no rush,” Aldo continued. “You may like the wines. You may not. That's Scarpa. We don’t search for structure or for complexity, because all we search for is to express Scarpa. We do this with finesse, and we do this with elegance.”
Scarpa’s history dates back 125 years. Only four people, in all that time, have held the winemaking reins. It has 30 hectares of land at Monferrato, and five hectares in the Langhe. It grows nine varieties, and makes 14 wines (and vermouth).
Here was Aldo’s other message: “Scarpa does not do long macerations, and does not use barriques.
“We make our wines, in this way, to maintain the heritage of our region. We don't think about what might be easier to sell. We don’t care about what might be quicker. That’s why we say 'we can wait'. That’s why we say, we are in no rush. We try to keep secondary oak flavour out of the wine. We don’t want structure. We don’t want complexity.”
I think, when he repeated this line, that I may not have been the only one in the room to smile, covertly. Aldo said, “We don't need sales. We don’t need to shift stock. It's only, for us, about people understanding Scarpa. It’s about representation.”
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All the Scarpa wines tasted at this lunch were reviewed to The Winefront site, though it’s worth re-stating that these wines were tasted over lunch, and so pretty quickly, and with the inherent distraction of food and service and people. That said, the Scarpa Verduno Pelaverga 2022 – grown on vines planted in 1970, and matured completely sans oak – is a great introduction to the Scarpa way of thinking, not to mention the quality of its fruit. Similarly with the Scarpa Freisa Monferrato 2019; this is just such a jolly, joyous wine, unencumbered and strict at once. Both these wines are sub AU $70, and while not screaming bargains, they’re reasonably priced for the character on offer. A step up from both these wines is Scarpa La Bogliona Barbera 2018 (AU $132), which shines a torch straight into the heart and mind of Scarpa.
And of course, the wines are complex, even at the welcome level, and structural.
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Scarpa also has accommodation. It’s here if you want to see it. In a most Italian moment, Aldo spoke of this accommodation. He said, ‘The style of the villas is, I think you would say, country chic.” He then paused, but only very briefly. “Chic, but with soul,” he added.