David Fletcher Nebbiolo d'Alba 2022

If only 90% of Barbaresco made was this good?! Dave’s Langhe Nebbiolo fruit is drawn from two different regions – Scaparoni and Monta – both of them located just across the Tanaro river, a short drive from the Barbaresco zone. Vinified with the same care and attention as Fletcher’s Barbaresco bottlings, the resulting wine spends just a little less time in the cellar before release. Fruit is fully destemmed and extractions are gentle, the resulting wine pressed in 10 year old, 300L barrels for 13-14 months before going to bottle for a further 6 months before release. Don't pull the cork and expect a runner-up type Nebbiolo here, intentionally knocked down a couple of notches like many producers do to their basic Nebbiolo wines. Wonderfully suave and packed with Nebbiolo purity on both nose and palate, Fletcher’s Langhe sees a core of powdery red raspberry and Amarena cherry fruit, an incisive streak a balsamic twang lending lift and verve, while a cooler menthol quality brings a countering bass note. Fined toned and silky tannins provide a perfectly approachable frame to this killer ‘baby’ Barbaresco. Fletcher makes wines of elegance; lovers, not fighters.

So what’s a guy from Adelaide doing making Barbaresco? Granted, the name Fletcher doesn’t exactly evoke thoughts of classically styled Barbaresco, nor does it bring to mind anything even remotely Italian. However, if tasted without the label in view, there’s not a chance anyone would guess it was the handiwork of a young Aussie. Having emerged from the University of Adelaide, David Fletcher made for Burgundy, cutting his teeth in the Côte Chalonnaise, before returning to Victoria’s Yarra Valley to further focus his craft in the production of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. It was during this period that an Italian beauty walked into his life: Nebbiolo. Injected with curiosity and spurred on by that seemingly hereditary Australian streak of wanderlust, Fletcher found himself working harvest in 2007 at Ceretto, one of Barbaresco’s most recognized producers. After a few years of contemplation and time in the region, he was “convinced that this was his place,” and today he, his wife, and their two girls reside in what is likely the coolest cantina in the region: the old Barbaresco train station.