Terre di Sarizzola Derthona Timorasso, Colline Tortonesi

There is a moment, somewhere in the hills above Tortona, when the road narrows to a single lane and the vines close in on both sides, and you realize you are somewhere that the rest of the wine world has not yet found. I've driven those roads more than once — the Colli Tortonesi in southeastern Piedmont, where the Po Valley flatlands give way to the Ligurian Apennines and the air smells of damp clay and wild herbs. I remember standing in a vineyard at around 350 meters, the fog still burning off the valley below, thinking that the soils beneath my feet looked almost identical to what I'd seen in the Langhe — ancient marine sediments, compressed and mineral-dense — and wondering why the wines from this corner of Piedmont weren't on every serious list in America. This Timorasso from Terre di Sarizzola is my answer to that question. It is one of the most compelling white wines I've encountered from Italy in years, and at $40, it is a genuine discovery.

Timorasso (tee-moh-RAH-so) is the grape that Walter Massa — the legendary producer at Vigneti Massa just down the road — essentially rescued from extinction in the 1980s. Today, every Italy-focused sommelier in San Francisco and New York knows the variety, but the wines are still criminally underrepresented on American lists compared to their quality level. The insiders who are paying attention — the wine directors at serious Italian restaurants in Los Angeles, the importers who spend their summers in Piedmont rather than Tuscany — have known about Terre di Sarizzola for years. This is NOT a wine you stumble across at a chain retailer. Weygandt-Metzler, one of the most discerning small importers working today, brings it in specifically because the estate represents something genuine: old-vine Timorasso farmed organically on some of the most historically significant soils in the region.

The Penacca family has been farming this land since the late 1800s, when Pietro Penacca established the estate in the hilltop village of Sarizzola in the Valle Ossona woodlands. His son Secondo expanded the operation into Milan and Genoa after the war, and Franco Penacca evolved it further through the 1970s. Today it is Mattia Bellinzona — a University of Milan-trained viticulturist and enologist representing the third generation — who has brought the estate into sharp focus. Organic certification was achieved in 2021 after years of integrated farming. The vineyards sit at 200 to 450 meters elevation on Tortonian-age calcareous marl and clay — the Marne di Sant'Agata, ancient marine sediments geologically related to the limestone and clay that underlie Barolo. This is the connection that stops me every time I think about Timorasso: the same marine origins, the same mineral intensity, expressed in a white wine rather than a red. The diurnal swings in this part of Piedmont are significant, and in 2023 — a hot, dry summer interrupted by providential September rains and cool nights — the result is Timorasso with concentrated, healthy fruit at a lower-than-typical 12.5% alcohol, the acidity preserved and electric.

In the glass, this wine is a luminous gold with faint green highlights and a clarity that signals precision in the cellar. On the nose: white peach, green apple, orange peel, crushed wet stone, and a thread of almond that appears only after a few minutes in the glass — restrained and precise, not opulent. On the palate, the acidity is the story. It arrives early and runs the full length of the wine, taut and saline, framing a body that is genuinely substantial without ever feeling heavy. The finish is long, mineral, and slightly phenolic in the best possible way — think oyster shell and lemon pith. Serve at 50-55°F in a Burgundy stem, and give it twenty minutes in the glass before you start forming opinions; this wine opens in waves, the fruit receding as the mineral core emerges. Drink window: this 2023 is drinking beautifully now and will reward cellaring through 2030 — the structure is there. Pair it with a classic Ligurian trofie al pesto, though I'd add a handful of green beans and fingerling potatoes to the bowl the way they do it in Genoa, and finish with a squeeze of lemon. Wines like this are why I'll never stop looking at the map and asking what's just beyond the edge of what everyone already knows.