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Conti Library Offer 1984-2012

Conti Library Offer 1984-2012

The story of the Conti sisters in Boca is a twofold triumph: as ultra-committed winegrowers who are reclaiming and replanting old vineyards in this difficult-to-farm zone, they are part of a larger effort to restore the Alto Piemonte to its pre-phylloxera glory and productivity; and, as visionary, trend-bucking women in a deeply conservative rural area, they have gradually overcome the skepticism and resistance of the local old timers, establishing themselves as undeniable leaders in the region. Elena, Paola, and Anna Conti are no newcomers, either; their father Ermanno, from whom they took over between 2002 and 2003, was one of the founders of the Boca DOC in the late 1960s, persisting in eking out wine from his single hectare there even as total production neared extinction during its nadir in the 1980s and ‘90s. Today, the sisters farm three total hectares in the zone, including a hectare and a half they cleared and replanted beginning in 2015, and their rigorous, biodynamically informed viticultural practices and extreme non-interventionism in the cellar place them squarely in the region’s vanguard.

This spring, we have the privilege of accessing a wide range of older vintages of Boca from the Conti family, from 2012 back to 1984 (and including most vintages within that range!). While the sisters have made small, thoughtful tweaks in their cellar methodology over the years, their approach remains adamantly traditional in spirit, and there is a clear through-line from the more recent vintages to the wines from the 1980s and ‘90s produced by their legendary father. Older vintages of Conti easily make the case for Boca being on equal footing with Barolo or Barbaresco in terms of longevity and complexity, and we invite you to dive deeply during this rare opportunity.

Compositionally speaking, Conti’s Boca comprises 75% Nebbiolo, 20% Vespolina, and 5% Uva Rara. Fermentation occurs in stainless steel without added yeasts or temperature stabilization, and the wine passes three years in a combination of previously used 500-liter Slavonian oak casks and assorted larger barrels, with sulfur added only just prior to bottling and in homeopathic amounts. Above all, it is a wine of tension, one which harmonizes seemingly opposite forces in compelling fashion: elemental volcanic minerality, buttressed by the soil’s rich veins of iron, alongside ethereal Alpine acidity; fruit, evocative of mountain berries and sappy cherries, simultaneously vibrant and savory, and growing autumnal with age; and a sense of delicacy and subtlety even in the warmest of vintages.

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