A New Discovery! "Nascetta"

Here I am reading the never-ending Wine Bible and trying to cram all this info about new global varieties. ( Currently I am on New Zealand ). The funny thing is I discovered a new variety without even leaving my region last weekend. After our Barolo Chinato tasting in the tiny town of Barolo, we stopped in the Cavatappi Museum right before closing time. I was immediately drawn to  Cascina Adelaide’s bottle of “white” amidst all the important “reds” in Barolo land.

When I looked at the label, I was surprised to see a native grape variety that I had never heard of right in my backyard (oh wait… maybe I had after reading “Il Dimenticato” or rather “The Forgotten One”). I wasn’t going to be reading about Nascetta in my wine bible as it is a newly rediscovered wine!

Apparently Cogno and Rivetto wineries have been making great efforts to bring this once popular white grape variety back into the light. Evidently this grape can even be traced back to the mid 1800’s. I had no idea what to expect when I bought this.

Last Saturday night, I cooked up a shrimp and zucchini pasta and thought it would be the perfect pairing with this new finding. Indeed it was brilliant! The aromas and flavors were hard for me to mentally categorize because they were all over the place! I smelled aromatic herbs, then limes and other citrus fruits, then a bit of clean vegetal hints like bell pepper, amazing floral scents and finally laces of peach! This was crazy and it was snapping and popping in my mouth like lemon-lime pop rocks. When paired with buttery olives it was tamed down to perfection, but was also a great match for the seafood.

This white kind of reminded me of descriptions of zesty clean New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs that I was just reading about in my book. At that time I was dreaming about tasting these snappy Sauv Blancs  but I am perfectly happy exploring this new variety for right now. I feel honored to have such easy access to a grape which virtually only comes from one commune Novello in Piemonte! The search is on for more “nascetta”!