Marco Pezzuto is part of the ongoing revolution of young, talented producers emerging from the Roero, which has continually proven to be a terrific source of wines of great finesse and brightness in contrast to the boldness and firm structure from the Langhe. With his first release in 2024, Marco's wines are captivating in their freshness, exuberance and drinkability while also showing a window to his promising talent as a vigneron within one of our favorite regions.

Marco Pezzuto

To introduce you to these wines, I'm going to jump to one of the last things said in our meeting, through interpreter Tom Myers: "These are wines that make you smile. Complexity doesn't need to be complicated."

That was In July of 2024, when we as a team had the opportunity to sit with the ebullient Marco Pezzuto, whose natural passion couldn't be contained by his lack of English fluency. The question posed to Tom, rather than Marco was, "Knee-jerk reaction, how do Marco's wines strike you?" And Tom's response perfectly captured what we had seen emitting from the man sitting next to him for the duration.

Marco says he came to the vineyards at a very young age, and was taken by the process, eventually enrolling in a local oenologically-focused high school. In 2006 he first worked a vineyard, and in 2007 he took his first job with a winery in Roero, the appellation within which he had grown up. Working with wineries within Roero and the Langhe provided a wealth of experience, exposing Marco to a variety of different styles; he admits that early on, he saw the Roero winemakers trying to more mirror the Langhe styles, as they had more successfully caught on commercially. Today, the pendulum has swung again, and Marco - along with Stefano Occhetti, another Roero native - is in the midst of those homegrown, talented young producers.

Bees. It was bees that framed Marco's understanding and led to his success. In 2017, he resigned from the winery to pursue a beekeeping as a vocation, eventually renting his first piece of land in 2018 which he would plant for himself that year. He grew his colonies from 200 families to 400, packaging his own honey and selling some in bulk. As his vineyard began to grow, just as he cared for his bees and what he surrounded them with in terms of crops, he too saw the level of care of the land impact the vines. From the original thought of creating wine to sell was borne the ideal of attaching his name to a label, to something he was proud of - all because of bees!

In 2021, Marco was able to create his first wine from his 2018 planting; he saw surprising promise in those wines, which emboldened him enough to seek out more vineyards to rent, more vines to give a solid base to the Marco Pezzuto domaine. In 2023, an opportunity was presented to rent a vineyard in Roero with plantings from 1950 & 1980; from his past experience he had seen that older vines would lend a more serious level of complexity, adding to the youthful exuberance of his own vineyard.

Marco acknowledges Roero for what it is, rather than trying to create other styles within it; while he admits he is still searching for his own style, what he's already created represents beautifully the direction of what we love about Roero. He admits he doesn't look to many producers as inspirations in terms of style, but rather their energy and impact. "So much of the other producers' wines are place-determined, so it doesn't make sense to use as a reference. There's a search in the Langhe to make wines with more finesse, more drinkable, whereas it's easier to do that in Roero," says Marco. Anyone who he looks to has created "An energy and a spirit in their wines," he says.

Back to Tom's musing on Marco's wines, he continued: "I see a great maturity in the wines already, in that he's not trying to overplay his hand. That's difficult when you're trying to find your way. Ultimately, they are fun to drink, but they have a sense of wisdom about them." Says Marco, "Terroir to me is not only the soil and microclimate, but also the person in the vineyard and winery. I want the wines to be complex but drinkable - on so many occasions, wines can seem like a bomb in the glass but you have trouble finishing them. I want an impressive nose, but I want you to be able to finish it quickly!"

Viticulture & Vinification

Marco crafts his wines within a cantina underneath his grandfather's house that he renovated, and will be adding additional equipment to in 2024, including temperature-controlled tanks for future warm vintages. He claims his winemaking process is "very simple" - for the red and rosato, he pays very close attention to the macerations, tasting consistently multiple times per day to capture "What I want and nothing more." Translation: these are wines of delicacy and brightness, the extractions controlled.

Without the addition of sulfur, the fermentations take off rather quickly. Most are fermented in wood, and all wines will age in wood, a small portion of which is new, given the rather small size and short history of the domaine. In the future, there will be cement tanks both for fermenting and aging.

In the vineyard, the processes are organically-focused; he saw early on with his bee colonies that they reacted very well to the strength of the soil stimulating the health of the flora surround them, so he will utilize his own compost that he's enriched with microorganisms, earthworms, and also the chipped & composted vine clippings from the year prior - one of the tenets of biodynamic viticulture in its cyclical nature.

With the 2023 vintage supplying 2 out of the 3 wines, the massive hailstorm in early July left him with about 10-15% of his expected crop, leaving almost no leaves on the vines. However, the lively soils contributed to incredible health of the remaining fruit, and Marco has been quite happy with the results. Eventually, he expects to create between 8-10,000 bottles each year; he doesn't want to go beyond his reach, to maintain that same energy and spirit (that he has so aspired to) within his own wines.

About the Label

"The logo is a stylized representation of a gentleman holding a child - actually it is a picture of my grandfather holding me as a child on a particular day, My grandfather in all his life had never seen the sea. And that day he had only come there because I had been there for a week and he couldn't last without seeing me for another week. However, he was on the beach all day in his long pants and tank top - that's why it's a picture that is very tender to me. That tells me about a generation of people who lived a lifetime of toil, who lived through the war, who worked just so they could eat (not in a starred restaurant but to feed themselves), who kept our area alive in the years when it was easier to go to the city and work in the factory. But most of all it represents my grandfather, the one who taught me that hard work and hard work get you where you want to go, who taught me that music is cheerfulness and celebration, that celebration and cheerfulness are important even if it is not all easy...and so many other things. My biggest regret is he cannot see what I am trying to do today, but that I am also doing it in his name." -Marco

Don’t sleep on Malaga. Maybe this Southern Spanish region hasn’t always been on the tip of the tongue for most sommeliers, but that is the magic of the wine industry; any region can have its spotlight at any moment. And in the Sierras de Malaga, the innovative and rule-breaking pioneers are the Vinedos Verticales. Juan Munoz and Vincente Inat are redefining what it means to be a winemaker in Malaga, making wines of incredible complexity while paying homage to their local varieties and terroir.

Vinedos Verticales

Viñedos Verticales is a dream come true of Juan Muñoz, a third-generation winegrower and winemaker in the region, and Vicente Inat, an enologist with experience in several wine-growing areas. In 2015, the two friends and their families began on this adventure with the idea of ​​crafting wines that express the singular character of the land where they were born.

The winery is located in Moclinejo, a small town in Axarquía (Málaga), near the Mediterranean Sea. Here, ancient vineyards grow on vertigo-inducing, steep slopes of schists, phyllites, and slate soils. The queen of the local varieties is the Muscat of Alexandria, and the Vinedos also grow other local, indigenous varieties, such as Pero Ximén, Doradilla, Garnacha, and the incredibly rare Romé.

Viticulture is still very traditional in Axarquilla and is heroic due to the steep rocky hillsides, which create an inseparable link between the land, the vineyards, and the people harvesting these vineyards.

Vinedos Verticales' philosophy is to work respectfully with the environment in the vineyard and winery. This entails regenerative viticulture and ancestral winemaking, creating distinct wines with little modern influence.

For vinification, Juan and Vicente utilize concrete vats, steel tanks, wooden barrels, and large oak casks that are more than 100 years old.

This unique terroir, the age of the vineyards, and the nature of its people make Axarquía a unique viticultural marvel. Vinedos Verticales focuses on small lot production to ensure the highest quality wines that balance elegance, minerality, and the distinct flavor characteristics of the Mediterranean while maintaining bright acidity through higher elevation sites.

A protege and disciple of the famed Domaine L'Anglore, Romain Le Bars follows a similar path of pursuing deep, complex natural wines from the Rhône. With his small holdings of Grenache and Syrah, Romain's early vintages reveal heaps of promise and are quickly becoming highly sought-after for collectors.

Romain Le Bars

Romain's first solo vintage was in 2018, following a 7-year stint with L'Anglore in Tavel. You could say he was impacted just a bit, as he's carried on the same traditions in his own, small vineyard - all of 1.5 hectares. From this tiny plot of Grenache and Syrah, Romain crafts wines of grace and intensity, his vines impeccably maintained so that he can use as little (or no) sulfur as possible.

Depending on the varietal and vintage, Romain will either direct-press his fruit or utilize carbonic maceration to create the style he thinks the grapes require. It's not color he's after but taste - what might seem red to some, others would call rosé, but they are all full of soul. In comparison to L'Anglore the wines are brighter and filled with a tension and energy that is exciting and rewards patience.