As with most of Europe, Northern Piedmont took its time recovering from a troubled century of rotten luck. First, phylloxera and vine diseases hit in the mid-to-late 1800s, then a historical hailstorm destroyed crops in 1904, followed by the havoc wreaked by back-to-back World Wars that devastated the willpower of this ancient wine community. People either emigrated away from Italy altogether or moved to the industrial centers of the country like Milan and Turin. While most of Alto Piemonte was overtaken by forests and grazing sheep, a few families resisted. Among those, were the Ioppa’s who farm some of the most prized vineyard parcels in the Ghemme DOCG. To this day, Ioppa remains a family affair: Giorgio Ioppa bears the flag from the family’s sixth generation and carries on the legacy with his sons, Andrea and Luca and his nephew, Marco.

The soils are composed of granite, quartz, and iron left behind from the retreat of the Mount Rosa glacier at the end of the last Ice Age. Further erosion of the Alps and the granite infused sands were moved by the Sesia river. Ghemme is mostly composed of alluvial soils but has one large plateau above the river where the soils are more firm and are a mix of hard clay and mineral rocks of iron and quartz.

Ioppa has taken to “the old way” of doing things in the vineyards, where they have done away with the use of herbicides, pesticides and chemical treatments and are now converting to organic farming. No easy feat in this region where high rainfall causes mildew to be prevalent, particularly considering the expanse of Ioppa’s 27 hectares of vines. In addition to Nebbiolo, Ioppa also farms local varietals Vespolina and Uva Rara, both used to soften the aggressive tannins and austere acidity that can partake to fickle Northern Piedmont Nebbiolo. Both are soft, slightly green, low-acid and low-tannin varieties. Thanks in part to the influence of consulting enologist Cristiano Garella since 2015, the Ioppa’s take pruning very seriously and prefer lower yields in the vineyards.

Stylistically the estate has turned away from experimenting with aging in smaller barrels and have returned to more traditional local methods of vinification using softer extractions and long aging in large wooden botti. The Ioppa cellar is located five meters below ground and holds seven 36-hL Slavonian wood cone vats and five 30-hL botti where the majority of the wines are aged. There is also about 20 barrique for aging vino passito.