Verduno Pelaverga 2022

The famous wine region of Piedmont, in the north of Italy, where the sought-after Barolos and Barbarescos are produced, fetched an exorbitant market value in the late 1980s, and so the land was practically inaccessible to young vignerons who did not have familiar properties in the region. For this reason, when he finished his oenology degree the young Gian Luca Colombo, who was born in the Langue region but had no ties to the winemaking tradition, set up a consulting activity in several Italian wine regions, thus acquiring not only experience but also recognition among his peers.

In 2011 Gian Luca was able to secure 0.3 hectares of vineyards in his homeland, and founded Segni di Langa. In 2014 he started the production in his own cellar, and in 2016 he released his Barolo. His wines reflect his personal interpretation, i.e., they are not conditioned by the necessity to follow the winemaking ideas carried out by the previous generations. As for the famous feud tradition vs. modernity taking place in the heart of Barolo, he defined immediately what his goal was.

His goal is, therefore, to craft wines that are faithful to the fruit that every year nature provides him, wines that dwell on emotion and drinkability. In order to reach this goal, that means to say, to make emotionally expressive wines, Gian Luca realized that the ideal path to follow was to go along with the practices of organic and biodynamic agriculture, the praxis of producing grapes with total respect to the soil microorganisms.

Galvanized by these ideas, his first release, a pinot noir, was awarded Top Italian Pinot Noir, and then after starting to make wines based on the nebbiolo grape Gian Luca won The Giulio Gambelli Young Winemaker of the Year award in 2014. From 2017 on, he marks each label not only with his name but also with his fingerprint. This personal signature represents the farmer, and the fingertip emphasizes his fidelity to the terroir, his willingness to make wines through minimal intervention both in the vineyard and in the cellar. All in all, Gian Luca aims to provide an authentic emotional experience to those who drink his unfiltered / unfined wines. As he says, “a good bottle of wine is the empty one!,” because the content of the bottle fills up with emotion the happy drinkers who open it.