Prié Blanc is a juicy secret of the wine world. The pergola-trained vines are grown at the foot of Mont Blanc in the uppermost, western corner of Valle d’Aosta, Italy’s smallest region. The wines are naturally ripe yet delicate (11% abv), the real deal in ‘minerality’. Unlike many fashionably-light wines (read: early harvest), they are properly fleshed out with quiet power and drive. Alpine intensity, understated.

@cave_mont_blanc was founded in 1983 to recover and protect abandoned, un-grafted vineyards. The modest cantina gathers precious Prié Blanc grapes from around 80 tiny growers, with each family contributing from vineyards at up to 1200 metres above sea level. Cave Mont Blanc’s work is knowledge-based natural wine production that respects the terroir of their alpine territory. Indigenous yeasts run ferments in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks and the resulting wines are carefully racked, forgoing clarification or stabilisation.

Their main wine, Blanc de Morgex et la Salle, is brilliant: fresh and fragrant with aromas of thyme, fleeting blossom and fleshy white nectarines and pears. It has a vital core of saline acidity and all the glacial minerals one could desire – a common thread that runs across this region/variety. ‘Vini Estremi’ is from the highest, oldest and most extreme plots and a dazzling example of what can be done here. Their sparkling wines are unique and some of Italy’s finest and most interesting. After ‘1187’ is fermented in stainless steel, it undergoes secondary fermentation in the bottle and is disgorged after 22 months. Precise, different and truly mineral, this is austere beauty, bottled.

A phenomenal amount of work and care goes into these precious, pre-phylloxera vineyards and the resulting wines – they are unlike anything you’ve had before.