What to Expect: Dolcetto d’Alba offers up plush purple fruits, integrated regional spice, and bouncy, pliable tannins.
Luigi Voghera and his wife, Pinuccia, put down roots in the small town of Tetti in 1974. Here in the hills of Neive, at the epicenter of the Barbaresco appellation, their farm has grown over the ensuing half century to a respectable 22 hectares scattered throughout the Langhe. Sadly, Luigi passed on, but his son, Livio, has proven to be a great winemaker in his own rite. The emphasis here is site specificity; they own parcels in a pair of less commonly found Cru sites of Barbaresco: Cottà and Basarin. And while Nebbiolo is the house specialty, Voghera’s bottlings of other local varieties are not to be missed.
While their non-Cru labels denote origins of typically large scope (Langhe Nebbiolo, for example), each wine is actually sourced from relatively small plots. All the wines are fermented in tank for purity of fruit, and then, depending on the cuvée, may see some time in French oak casks made of wood sourced from the Allier Forest, noted for its uniquely tight grains.