Wine 9 min

The Wines of the Valtellina

On mountain Barolo, da Vinci's cellar notes, and the joy of Robert Parker giving something sixty points

"The Valtellina, as it is called, a valley encircled by tall and terrible mountains, makes strong wine in great quantities." This is how Leonardo da Vinci described the Valtellina when he first visited in 1494.

If I didn't already love the wines, the ultimate endorsement came in the form of disgust from Robert Parker. He famously got into a tiff with a wine shop owner who challenged him to taste through a selection of wines from the region. His ensuing notes and scores were amazing — dispensing sixty-plus scores right and left and even commenting that one of the wines smelled like bat guano. He clearly didn't like the wines, and many people suddenly got interested.

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