The Colombo Sormani family farms on some of the steepest vineyards you’ll find anywhere in Italy. Literally, these terraces cling to the mountainsides above the Adda River in Valtellina. It’s brutal and heroic work: hand-tending, hand-picking, rope work to move barrels.
The only place I’ve ever seen more demanding is the Mosel in Germany where vineyards look more like black diamond ski slopes, not a place you’d choose to cultivate vines which require an insane amount of labor. You only do this work if you care fiercely about what’s under your feet. Puntesel in 2022 captures that labor and terrain.
The vine age, the altitude, and the granite soils shape a wine with linear drive and a real sense of topography — not in a textbook way, but in a “this could only come from here” way. What we appreciate most about the Sormani family is how they’ve committed to maintaining these vineyards in a world that would cheerfully abandon them for comfort. Every bottle feels like a tribute to place and to the kind of manual work that even many old-school regions have lost.