The Vespolina Grape: Alto Piemonte's Aromatic Secret

The name is a diminutive of vespa, wasp; in the October mornings of the Novara hills, ripe Vespolina bunches attract them in numbers that local growers have learned to read as a harvest signal, which is how this grape acquired an identity as pest-adjacent rather than serious. That reputation has never been entirely unwarranted. Vespolina is thin-skinned, aromatic, and substantially lower in tannin than Nebbiolo, the variety it has grown alongside on Alto Piemonte's glacial moraine soils for centuries. In an appellation culture that values structure, minerality, and the capacity for long aging above all else, those characteristics have historically relegated Vespolina to a supporting role. It is permitted in Ghemme DOCG at up to 15% of the uvaggio. The appellation's benchmark producer, Antichi Vigneti di Cantalupo, declines to use it. This tells you something important about the grape and rather more about the appellation.

The Name

Vespolina's synonymy with Ughetta di Canneto tells you where its historical centre of gravity lies: the town of Canneto Pavese and the surrounding Oltrepò Pavese zone in Lombardia, where it appears in records dating to the eighteenth century. In Alto Piemonte the name Vespolina predominates, and the variety has been cultivated alongside Nebbiolo in the Novara hills for long enough that the two grapes have become entangled in the regional imagination, neither one planted without some awareness of the other.

The wasp connection is botanical rather than metaphorical. Vespolina's berries are small and thin-skinned; they achieve high sugar concentration as the season progresses, and by mid-October the bunches are sufficiently sweet to attract wasps, which puncture the skins and begin fermenting the pulp in the vineyard. For the grower this is diagnostic rather than catastrophic: if the wasps have found the Vespolina, the Spanna is close behind. In a landscape where harvest timing is everything and the difference between physiological ripeness and rain damage can be a matter of days, that signal has its uses.

What the name does not tell you: Vespolina is a variety of genuine aromatic character and considerable complexity, capable of contributing things to a blend that no amount of Nebbiolo produces alone. Its historical relegation to supporting-cast status is a consequence of how Alto Piemonte has been commercially narrated, not a verdict on the grape's quality.

What It Brings

The aromatics announce themselves. The register runs to crushed violet, dried rose petal, white and black pepper, red cherry, and occasionally a faint suggestion of iris at the edge of the nose. These are not the aromatics of Nebbiolo, which tends in its Alto Piemonte expression toward blood orange, cedar, tobacco, tar, and dried rose in a darker, more architecturally structured mode. Vespolina's perfume is lighter and more immediate; it sits at the front of the nose rather than building slowly in the glass. If Spanna is a wine that opens over two hours in a decanter, Vespolina-influenced blends tend to be generous within minutes of the pour.

The tannin difference is more significant than the aromatic contrast alone suggests. Nebbiolo grown on moraine soils in the Alto Piemonte produces tannins that are fine in texture compared to Langhe Nebbiolo, but genuinely present, particularly in the early years after the mandatory aging requirements are met. A young Ghemme requires time. The permitted 15% of Vespolina and Uva Rara can moderate that tannic architecture without compromising the wine's mineral character or its capacity for development. The result, in the hands of producers who use the allowance thoughtfully, is a Ghemme that is more accessible in its first decade without becoming a fundamentally different kind of wine.

Vespolina's acidity is high, notably so, which means it does not dilute the long saline finish that defines serious Alto Piemonte Nebbiolo. It adds aromatic presence without sacrificing what the moraine delivers in terms of mineral persistence. This is, to be precise, a more useful contribution than its historical reputation suggests.

Ghemme and the 15%

The Ghemme DOCG regulations permit up to 15% combined Vespolina and Uva Rara in the uvaggio. This is a modest allowance relative to what Boca DOC permits, and it reflects the appellation's orientation toward Nebbiolo (Spanna) as the primary voice. In practice, the use of this 15% separates the estate producers: some use a portion of the allowance; some do not.

Cantalupo's position is the clearest articulation of the non-use philosophy, and the most instructive. The estate farms 34 to 35 hectares, with 80% planted to Nebbiolo (Spanna), and it does grow Vespolina and Uva Rara among its other varieties; the material exists. The decision not to include either in the Ghemme bottlings is therefore a deliberate choice at every level of the range, from the Cantalupo Ghemme Anno Primo through to the 98-point Collis Breclemae, which Antonio Galloni reviewed in June 2023 and projected a drinking window through 2046. Alberto Arlunno's argument, consistent across four decades, is that blending dilutes the voice of the moraine. One might argue this is a quality-first position; one might equally argue it is a terroir-first position, which is not quite the same thing but reaches the same conclusion. The results across the Breclemae and Carellae single-vineyard crus suggest that in this particular case, the moraine speaks more than adequately for itself.

Estates that use the allowance tend to produce Ghemme that is more immediately expressive on release, with a floral front note that pure Spanna blends achieve more slowly, if at all. Whether this constitutes an interpretation or a compromise depends rather on what you believe Ghemme is fundamentally for. If you believe the answer is the clearest possible expression of glacial moraine terroir through Nebbiolo, Cantalupo's position is coherent. If you believe it is the clearest possible expression of what the Novara hills have historically grown, which has always included Vespolina alongside Spanna, the blend philosophy has its own coherence.

For context on Ghemme's appellation character and what the moraine delivers through pure Nebbiolo, and for the complete picture of Alto Piemonte's seven appellations across which Vespolina operates in varying proportions, those pieces are the correct starting point.

Boca's Argument

At the other end of the regulatory spectrum, Boca DOC permits up to 40% Vespolina and Uva Rara combined in the blend. Most serious Boca producers use a substantial portion of this allowance, and the results are wines with a fundamentally different character from the pure-Spanna Ghemme style. Here Vespolina is not a minor aromatic accent; it is a structural component of the appellation's identity.

Le Piane, under Christoph Kuenzli, rebuilt Boca's modern reputation from near-extinction beginning in the late 1990s, replanting abandoned terraces at elevations of 300 to 500 meters when no straightforward economic logic supported doing so. The Mimo bottling from Le Piane is the standard critical reference for what Boca achieves at a serious level, and Vespolina's contribution to its aromatic intensity is not incidental. Boca sits higher than Ghemme, with significant volcanic porphyry mixed into the granite moraine base; the cooler temperatures and longer growing season produce a different kind of Vespolina than what the Novara valley floor typically delivers. The pepper register is more pronounced, the floral component more persistent, and the overall profile more structured than Vespolina-inflected Ghemme blends tend to achieve from the same variety at lower altitude.

The comparison between Ghemme and Boca is therefore not simply an appellation comparison; it is partly a comparison of what Vespolina does at different elevations, in different proportions, and against different moraine compositions. A Boca at 35% Vespolina from Le Piane tastes demonstrably different from a Ghemme at 12% Vespolina from an estate that uses the allowance. The grape is the constant; the context changes everything.

Vespolina also appears in the permitted uvaggi of Bramaterra DOC, where the regulations require a minimum 50% Nebbiolo blended with Croatina, Bonarda Novarese, and Vespolina; of Sizzano DOC; and of Fara DOC. In each case it plays a distinct role determined by the minimum Nebbiolo requirement and the soil character of the specific appellation. Bramaterra, with its clay content alongside granite and porphyry, produces blends with more body and tannin grip; Vespolina's aromatic contribution there is audible but secondary to the structural work done by Croatina and Nebbiolo. In Sizzano and Fara, the lighter sandy soils produce more immediately aromatic wines, and Vespolina's register is often the most prominent element in the glass on first encounter.

Uva Rara, the other permitted blending partner across several of these appellations, operates through a different mechanism: its contribution is primarily structural, softening tannin and adding weight to the mid-palate rather than aromatic lift. A detailed examination of Uva Rara's character and its distinct role across the Alto Piemonte appellations will be published on this site later in July 2026.

For the record on how Nebbiolo behaves across Alpine terroirs more broadly, including the comparison between Ghemme's moraine expression and the alpine Picotener biotype of Carema, see The Picotener Grape: Nebbiolo's Alpine Clone.

Vespolina is not, finally, a grape that defines Alto Piemonte. Nebbiolo does that. But it is the grape that tells you how a producer thinks about the region: whether they hear the moraine speaking on its own terms, or whether they believe the moraine speaks more clearly with a little aromatic company. Both positions have merit. The wines will tell you which is correct for your program.