Piemonte’s south-east corner adjoins three other regions: Lombardia, Liguria and Emilia-Romagna. This is an area of wooded hills, rolling wheat fields and vineyards which extend south of the city of Tortona (Derthona, as it was to the Romans, and as it appears on the labels of the region’s wines) to the Ligurian Apennines.
In winemaking terms, the region is most famous for Timorasso, the grape which makes premium, age worthy whites that have been in favour with the nobility of the region since the fourteenth century.
Phylloxera and the war, in combination with the difficult nature of the grape, its low yields and its idiosyncratic, nuanced style, caused its commercial collapse, to the point where just a single winemaker, Walter Massa, was left flying its flag.