Davide Carlone

The history that deserves to be told about the Carlone winery starts way before Davide returned to Boca in 1990, rented some vineyard land, and nurtured his passion for land stewardship and wine-making. It even starts before Davide Carlone was a younger lad, helping his grandfather tend callous vines on the cusp of consumption by the looming, ambitious forests that surrounded them. And It certainly starts before the desolation and forgotten harvests of post WWII Boca. No, it starts about 300 million years before that. To really get a sense of this place, one has to contemplate the awesome power of Mother Nature, and revere the unfathomable power and forces that literally create mountains and valleys, but at the same time, cautiously cradle life and contain boundless energies. That is, at least, until those energies can be contained no more...

Around 282 million years ago, the area of Boca, as well as much of the surrounding area, was forever altered by the explosive eruption of a geologic supervolcano. The remaining caldera is so incredibly diverse that it is now a  protected park that was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2013. To get an idea of how large the area is first, the Sesia Val Grande geopark currently contains 90 municipalities and has around 160,000 people living in it. It also has a constant stream of adventure tourists that scale its peaks, survey its outcrops, hike its trails, and take pictures of its glacial past and exposed geologic wonders. Even in this seemingly small part of Italy, there are boundless wonders of science and nature, and it's here where evidence of humans and their ancestors have been observed through millennia. It's here where some of the most beautiful and confounding grapes gathered a conscription of some of the most dedicated farmers and vignerons to create some of the most delicious, under-appreciated wine in Europe, and maybe even the world.

It's here on the timeline that it's appropriate to introduce Davide Carlone. He, with the help of famed enologist  Cristiano Garella, painstakingly fosters native grapes, in organic fashion, into some of the most intriguing wines you're likely to ever drink. Being in protected wilderness, the law proclaims what can and cant be done on this land, but it's Carlone's own wisdom and care for his land and vines that truly dictates his standards--his use of natural materials and organic fertilizers to build, structure, and feed his crop are just the norm. In an area of Piedmont where the reputation is staunchly defined by the wild and untamed, Davide has a reputation for keeping his vineyards tightly trimmed and well organized. This carries over into the cellars and the winemaking philosophy--utilize what nature has provided and be respectful of its bounty. Minimal wine-making techniques keep the Carlone wines a direct conduit to the place and history that is Boca. Naturally occurring yeasts, spontaneous malolactic fermentation, neutral vessel dominance, all of these things resonate Davide's resolve to deliver the best wines that can be made.