Why it matters
The producer
Cristina Scarpellini was practising law in Milan when a client relationship with a Valtellina winery around 2006 pulled her attention north to the mountains. Two years later she signed a lease on one hectare in the Villa di Tirano area and made her first vintage. The legal career was behind her.
Today Tenuta Scerscé farms seven hectares of Chiavennasca across four sub-zones of Valtellina: three hectares in Valgella near Teglio, two in Tirano, and single hectares in both Inferno and Sassella. The terraces run from 400 to 700 metres above sea level. The estate name comes from the Lombard dialect word for the two-pronged hand tool used to scrape around vine roots and clear shoots from the base of each plant on Valtellina's narrow stonewalled terraces. Scarpellini chose a term that most Italian speakers would not recognise, a word that describes, without ornament, exactly the kind of work her vineyard demands.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Valtellina is a long alpine valley in Lombardy that runs east to west above Lake Como, carved by the Adda river and flanked to the north by the Rhaetian Alps. Nebbiolo has grown here for centuries under a local name, Chiavennasca, and the wines are classified under two DOCG designations. Valtellina Superiore DOCG covers the sub-zones of Sassella, Grumello, Inferno, Valgella, and Maroggia, each a distinct section of south-facing terraced hillside above the valley floor. Sforzato di Valtellina DOCG is a separate category altogether: dried grapes, higher concentration, a minimum of 14 percent alcohol, and a wine that belongs in a different conversation from the Superiore range.
Buyers who know Nebbiolo from Barolo or Barbaresco will find Chiavennasca differently proportioned. The alpine elevation and the valley's steep sun angle produce grapes with pronounced acidity and firm tannins, but the continental mountain climate keeps freshness in the fruit that the warmer Piedmontese versions do not always share.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The 1,500 hours per hectare figure is worth pausing on. A conventional flat vineyard might need 400 to 500 hours. Valtellina's terraces require three times that because every task, pruning, shoot removal, canopy management, harvest, is performed by a person moving along a narrow stone ledge with hand tools. The scerscé implement the estate is named for is part of that vocabulary: a fork-tipped tool used to clear around the base of each vine without damaging the root system.
In the cellar, Scarpellini separates terrace groups before fermentation and runs skin maceration before moving to élevage. The length of maceration varies by wine. Nettare macerates for approximately 15 days, producing a fruit-forward, approachable style. Essenza draws on terraces from Valgella, Inferno, and Sassella and receives longer contact and extended élevage, deepening tannin grip while retaining Chiavennasca's natural acidity as the structural core. Infinito undergoes partial grape drying before fermentation, the appassimento process required by the Sforzato appellation, followed by extended maceration and oak ageing.
Wines to know
The range in view
All three wines are Chiavennasca, but each appellation and process produces a different register.
Nettare sits under Valtellina Superiore DOC and is the entry point to the range. Fifteen days of skin contact gives a wine that is ruby red, cherry-fruited, and spice-lifted, with tannins that are firm enough to have presence but integrated enough for earlier drinking. Fresh acidity runs through the mid-palate and holds the fruit together on the finish. This is Chiavennasca at its most immediately readable.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Nettare. It is a Valtellina Superiore DOC made from Chiavennasca with fifteen days of skin maceration, bottled at approachable ripeness. The fruit is direct: red cherry, lifted spice, a fresh acid line that keeps the wine moving through the mid-palate to a clean, fairly precise finish. The tannins are silky rather than drying. This is not a bottle that demands food or age, though it handles both. It is the clearest statement of what Chiavennasca tastes like when farmed on steep granite terraces by a winemaker who keeps the process clean and the vineyard work exhaustingly thorough.