A Top Tier Barolo Estate: Elvio Cogno

The Cogno winery is probably not as familiar to most Barolo fans as names like Mascarello or Conterno, but in my opinion, it’s in the same league, right up there with the best of Alba’s elite. The name it bears, Elvio Cogno, is the name of its founder, a top-notch winemaker who many decades ago left his position at Marcarini, where he had been responsible for some of its finest vintages, to establish his own winery on a prime hilltop in Novello. That’s probably the least known of Barolo’s communes, but the Cogno winery has put it on the map.
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Cogno’s winemaker, for some time now, has been Valter Fissore, Elvio’s son-in-law. With his wife Nadia, they have kept Elvio’s spirit alive, and if anything have raised the quality of the wines. This is a winery that stands in the top tier of Piedmont accomplishment.

I don’t say that lightly, but every time I pour a Cogno wine, I taste the truth of it. These are wines of grace and elegance wrapped around depth and power. Classic Barolo aromas and flavors, to be sure, but also layers of them, so each sip seems to open up a new vista. That’s good grapes, good terroir, and masterly winemaking.

Cogno has many claims to fame, but not the least is that it produces the only 100% Nebbiolo Rosé in the Piedmont. That’s not the color of the wine: it’s the name of the grape. The Nebbiolo clone situation is beyond complex and bordering on bewildering, with the possibilities of numerous sub-varieties compounded by a jumble of regional names for each of them.

For years, orthodoxy held that there were three main clones: Nebbiolo Lampia, Nebbiolo Michet, and Nebbiolo Rosé.

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That apple cart was thoroughly upset about ten years ago, when ampelographical research established that Nebbiolo Rosé was definitely not a clone of Nebbiolo but a whole separate variety, perhaps even a parent of Lampia (of which Michet now seems to be a genetic variant). This is a situation that most wine journalists have simply chosen to ignore – as have, apparently, all the official wine bodies, as no Barolo containing Rosé has yet to be declassified.

Cogno’s Vigna Elena still sports its Barolo DOCG, so I guess the tacit agreement is that Rosé still counts as Nebbiolo. Except for Vigna Elena, Rosé, though beautifully fragrant, has only ever been a small fraction of most producers’ Barolo. That’s because of its lighter color, long regarded as a serious flaw in a red wine. We are happily over that particular fetish and can now appreciate the special beauty of a wine like Vigna Elena.

I had the pleasure of verifying that for myself just a few nights ago, when Diane prepared a special dinner as a setting for an – as it turned out to be – equally special bottle of Cogno’s Barolo Vigna Elena 2004.
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I was just bowled over by this wine. Its aroma popped out the second I started pouring it, a rich, intense fragrance of black cherry and black raspberry. Those flavors and that intensity continued on the palate. There, it felt light-bodied, but at the same time mouth-filling and deep, with a long, long finish of dried fruits. The black cherry component became more and more prominent as the wine opened in the glass.

This Vigna Elena was perfectly at home with our first course, a country paté, and it loved the rare beef that followed. With the cheese course – a very young Tuscan Pecorino and a mature Taleggio – it got all fat and sassy. At no point did I get the impression that this wine had yet reached its peak:  There was just so much freshness to its fruit that I would guess that it is still at least ten years away from full maturity, maybe more. This was simply a great bottle of Barolo. Hats off to Valter and Nadia.

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The Elvio Cogno winery is no one-trick pony: It makes the whole line of Langhe wines – several different Barolos beyond Vigna Elena, a Barbaresco, an estimable Langhe Nebbiolo Montegrilli*, a Dolcetto, and an eye-opening Barbera from pre-phylloxera vines, a real rarity in this part of the wine world. Valter Fissore has even embarked on an effort to save one of Piedmont’s rare, endangered white grapes of quality, Nascetta, which Cogno bottles as Anas-Cëtta. It’s a bit of an oddity in this land of red wines, but quite intriguing, and well worth trying. As is, in my opinion, anything under the Cogno label.

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*  Shortly after I finished drafting this post, I discovered a bottle of Cogno’s 2005 Montegrilli Nebbiolo that I had inadvertently stored away – inadvertently because I usually think of the ideal drinking window for Langhe Nebbiolo as being 4 to 8 years from harvest. I don’t think of it as a wine for long keeping and maturation. Boy, was I wrong. I have seriously underestimated Nebbiolo, or Cogno, or both. I opened this bottle – without any great expectations – for a simple weekday dinner, and it was wonderful. At 17 years of age, it was still quite live and enjoyable, very elegant on the palate and just brimming with characteristic Nebbiolo flavors. If I had been tasting it blind, I would have thought it a good Barolo just beginning to mature. Another tip of the hat to Valter and Nadia!