La Spinetta

La Spinetta is the Piedmont house with the rhinoceros on the label, and the thing people get wrong is where it came from. It did not start with Nebbiolo. It started with Moscato d'Asti in the late 1970s, at a time when sweet fizzy Piedmontese wine was treated as an afterthought, and it treated that wine seriously enough to make everyone else reconsider. The Nebbiolo came later and the reputation followed it, but the Moscato is not a sideline.

The range divides by grape before it divides by price. Moscato d'Asti and the whites, Timorasso among them, are aromatic and low in tannin. Barbera sits in the middle: dark fruit, high acid, very little grip. Nebbiolo is the one that asks something of you, and the Tuscan wines under the same ownership are Sangiovese and Vermentino working in a completely different register.

Money buys density and ageing capacity here, not approachability. The most expensive bottles are usually the least ready and the least forgiving, which is the opposite of what a price list implies.

This list is sorted by price, lowest first.