Why it matters
The producer
Valerio Raviolo farms red schist in the Pinerolese hills above Barge, a Cuneese town in the Piedmontese foothills roughly 50 kilometres southwest of Turin. This is not Barolo country. The DOC Pinerolese is a small, flexible Piedmontese denomination that sits apart from the famous Langhe appellations and permits a wide range of indigenous and international varieties. Le Marie uses that latitude to work almost entirely with varieties that most Italian wine buyers will not recognise.
The two wines Valerio produces with his family, Blanc de Lissart and Rouge de Lissart, are both named for Lissart, a locality whose name traces to Eyssart, a place recorded in a document from 1203. The estate holds organic certification and farms approximately 10 hectares across multiple plots. Small volumes and specialist importers in the UK, Australia, and the United States put these wines in a narrow distribution lane, which is part of why the estate has stayed largely below the radar of mainstream Italian wine coverage.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Barge sits at the edge of the Cottian Alps, where the Piedmontese plain meets a series of valleys running south and west toward the French border. The Pinerolese hills are geologically older and compositionally different from the Langhe limestone and Monferrato clay that underpin Barolo and Barbera d'Asti. Here the dominant geology is schist, and at Le Marie it is red in colour and rich in mineral salts.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The approximately 10 hectares of Le Marie's vineyards divide between white Malvasia Moscata parcels and red variety plots carrying Barbera, Freisa, Bonarda, Chatus, and Neretta Cuneese. Certified organic farming across all plots means no synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fertilisers. The schistose soils drain well enough that fungal pressure is lower than in valley-floor sites, which helps organic management at this elevation.
In the cellar, both wines are made entirely in stainless steel. For the Blanc de Lissart, the approach preserves Malvasia Moscata's volatile perfume compounds intact. No wood, no extended oxidation, no softening of the grape's forward aromatic character. For the Rouge de Lissart, maceration runs 7 to 10 days in temperature-controlled steel tanks, extracting colour and soft tannin from the five-variety blend without overworking any single component. After malolactic fermentation, the red spends 8 to 10 months in steel vats before bottling. No oak at any stage. The cellar work is minimal in the best sense: it keeps the schist, the altitude, and the varieties audible in the glass.
Wines to know
The range in view
Le Marie makes two wines, and they are genuinely different from each other in grape, colour, and style.
Blanc de Lissart is a DOC Pinerolese white from Malvasia Moscata, one of several Malvasia sub-varieties grown in northern Italy. Malvasia Moscata is naturally aromatic, producing wines where the grape's perfume is prominent from the first pour. Le Marie makes it bone dry. The nose is floral and heady: summer meadow, elderflower, tangerine. The palate follows through on the aromatics but without sweetness: kiwi, jasmine, and bright green-grape fruit, with acidity from the altitude cutting through and keeping the wine from feeling heavy. Production is capped at 9,000 bottles annually. For a wine from an obscure Piedmontese appellation made from an underplanted grape variety, those numbers make it genuinely rare.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Blanc de Lissart. Malvasia Moscata made bone dry at 400 metres on red schist is an unusual proposition in the Italian white wine landscape, and Le Marie's version is fragrant on the nose, elderflower and tangerine, and dry and mineral on the palate, with bright acidity drawing the finish long. There is no oak, no residual sweetness, and no attempt to soften what the grape and the site produce. The 9,000-bottle production limit means it is worth ordering when you find it.