Nascetta

Nascetta

The Rediscovered Indigenous
Variety

Once widespread in Langa, it is today present mainly in the municipality of Novello and currently counts just over 50 hectares in total. Rediscovered thanks to the work of some producers on new plantings made in the 1990s, it produces harmonious and structured wines that lend themselves well to wood ageing.
The first documents that speak of Nas-cëtta, also known as “Anascetta”, tell of an extraordinary wine. In 1877, the scholar Giuseppe dei Conti di Rovasenda, in his “Saggio di un’ampelografia universale” (Essay on a Universal Ampelography), defines Nas-cëtta as “an extremely delicate grape and exquisite wine”. These first notes reveal that Nas-cëtta was once vinified sweet, appreciated as an aromatic wine in blends with other Piedmontese whites. The oral tradition of Novello also confirms the thesis: Nas-cëtta was used as a Mass wine, sweet and slightly dried on the vine, capable of withstanding the test of time. Furthermore, in the “Agrarian Monograph on the Alba District”, Lorenzo Fantini cited in 1883 “Anascetta, a variety that produces very fine grapes… It is cultivated in good quantities in the territory of Novello, where it yields exceedingly well.”
The indigenous Nas-cëtta variety is by nature delicate and inconsistent, very difficult to cultivate, with yields that can be abundant or very poor. Thus, during the twentieth century, the advent of more profitable varieties and, above all, Nebbiolo for Barolo, marginalised its presence to the point of almost causing its extinction. Cultivation was not entirely abandoned, but survived in rare and very small vineyards (the oldest of which dated 1948) and in scattered rows interspersed among other types, maintained more out of affection than to be vinified.