More than a dozen years ago, Bulgarian-born enologist and wine journalist Bisso Atanassov was consulting for a Ukrainian businessman committed to planting a vineyard on the Black Sea coast east of Odessa.
His client, telecom entrepreneur Eugene Shneyderis, had caught the wine bug in Spain. For his winery, called Beykush, the men chose 17 grape varieties from across Europe to cultivate on more than 25 acres.
“He wanted to make some important whites,” says Atanassov, who recommended whites from Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay to Riesling and Rkatsiteli.
“And,” he adds, “I suggested Timorasso.”
Thus was born an unlikely experiment with Timorasso—one of Italy’s most exciting white wine stories.
At home in Italy’s Colli Tortonesi appellation, which is comprised of 46 towns around Tortona in southeastern Piedmont, this difficult-to-cultivate grape has rebounded from near extinction in the 1980s, when only a few acres remained. Today, the Timorasso scene there has boomed, encompassing more than 60 wineries, 750 acres of vines and production of 100,000 cases. Timorasso wines from Colli Tortonesi are labeled with Tortona’s ancient name, “Derthona,” which is pending official approval as its own appellation.
The buzz first started more than a decade ago, largely because of the variety’s potential to create unique, complex and exuberant gourmet wines. High in acidity, alcohol and tannins, Timorasso wines can be crisp and aromatic, saline and mineral; with time, they develop petrol and honeyed notes. Analysis of the wines’ extract has shown them to be close to reds.
Spurring the action in the last five years are big-name Barolo wineries that have moved into the area, among them Borgogno, Pio Cesare, La Spinetta, Oddero, Roagna and Vietti. Some Langhe area producers, such as Ferdinando Principiano, have taken a different strategy, planting the grape closer to home and bottling it as Langhe Bianco.
So, what does this have to do with Ukraine?
Timorasso is no longer a Piedmont secret shared by in-the-know somms. It’s still a niche, but one that has drawn the attention of intrepid producers—some in seemingly unlikely places.
Timorasso owes its arrival in Ukraine to Atanassov’s enology studies in Piedmont, where he has lived for the past 15 years. There, he met Walter Massa of Vigneti Massa, the visionary who began resurrecting Timorasso in the late 1980s and has encouraged others to join him.
I met Atanassov in chic, seaside Portofino at a recent Colli Tortonesi tasting, where he was a guest, presenting Beykush’s Black Sea version. Aged in French oak barrels, it was a slightly oxidative wine with a kind of exotic, Eastern European feel.
Atanassov recounted how, in 2017, Beykush’s first 100 bottles (less than 10 cases) of Timorasso, then called “Fantasy,” were scooped up by one Kyiv wine bar. With the war, the bar closed early last year, prompting Shneyderis to open his own wine bar, called Artania, in the city. After Ukraine’s principal bottle factory was bombed, he had to delay bottling the 75 cases of the 2021 vintage, now called “Lerici,” because of a bottle shortage.
Today, both Atanassov and Shneyderis work remotely—from quite a distance: Atanassov from near Barbaresco and Shneyderis from Spain, where he moved with his wife and six children.
Timorasso has also journeyed to the New World, where the only known planting is in Northern California. Over the last four years, Sam Bilbro, who specializes in Piedmont varieties at Idlewild Wines, has grafted Timorasso in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley and Mendocino’s Yorkville Highlands.
“The variety speaks clearly, but shows some unique California attributes,” enthuses Bilbro, who plans to release his first 75 cases of Timorasso, from the 2022 vintage, this fall.
Within Piedmont, where most versions of Timorasso are fermented and aged in stainless steel, there is some limited experimentation with barrel fermenting and aging, as well as maceration on skins. One local winemaker, Ezio Poggi, produces a classic-method sparkler from Timorasso grown at high elevation.
Sassaia, based in Piedmont’s Monferrato appellation, was one of the outsiders to plant around Tortona. From their first vintage in 2019, owner Enrico de Alessandrini and his consultant, Burgundy native Pierre Naigeon, settled on a traditional Burgundian style with fermentation in French oak barrels using ambient yeasts. Naigeon vinified that maiden vintage from refrigerated grapes transported to his own winery at the time, all the way in Gevrey-Chambertin.
“The first time I tasted Timorasso, I couldn’t tell if it was closer to Chardonnay or Riesling,” says Naigeon. “But it has this bigger orange peel character that is the signature of the area.”
“At this moment, our top competitors are Chablis and Riesling,” says Gian Paolo Repetto of Vigneti Repetto and president of the Colli Tortonesi wine consortium. “These are white wines with a capacity to age.”
The new Derthona appellation comprises three categories of Timorasso-based wines: classic Derthona, released a year after harvest; Picccolo Derthona, made from young vines and released after six months; and Derthona Riserva, released after two and a half years.
As a relatively small, focused appellation, Colli Tortonesi seems to be playing its cards right, emphasizing distribution in high-end restaurants and creating an open, collegial scene among members.
“We are all friends,” says Repetto. “It’s a positive competition.”
The group’s global approach should be a model for all Italian wine regions, with members promoting their flagship variety wherever it might be grown, while protecting the provenance of its birthplace with the Derthona label.
“When a place identifies with a variety and it’s high quality, it helps everybody,” says Elisa Semino, third-generation winemaker at La Colombera, which has released more than 20 vintages of Timorasso/Derthona wines from the hills within Tortona’s city limits. “It’s what saved the area.”
