The Colli Tortonesi, a tiny eastern Piedmontese appellation, doesn’t look or feel like how you’d expect. For one thing, it’s sleepy there – the massive estates and the constant thrum of the wine business peters off around somewhere in Asti. You can see it in the hills, which remain wild and biodiverse, with large swathes of forest where boars are more common than man, and which serve to moderate the temperature and trap the famous fogs of the region.

In what few vineyards you see, one notices a dearth (some might say derthona) of Nebbiolo. Look closer, and you might notice that you’re not seeing too many red grapes at all. Instead, the Colli Tortonesi is solidly, refreshingly, bracingly, white wine territory – specifically, the noble timorasso, or derthona in Latin (from which the appellation draws its name), which should give you just how autocthonic things get in this corner of Italy.

It wasn’t always this way in the Colli Tortonesi – indeed, timorasso almost went extinct post phylloxera, as vineyards in the region were replanted to barbera and cortese until a group of young vingerons in the 1980s rediscovered the grape in the Tantèi vineyard, one of the crown jewels of the Mandirola 1913 estate. Cuttings from that vineyard formed the first massale selections that pulled the variety back from the brink and to its current undisputed status as the white wine of the region, comprising 68% of all plantings. In a real sense, any time you’re tasting a timorasso, you’re tasting Mandirola 1913’s work.

The estate isn’t just coasting on 1980s style ancient history. Today, under the stewardship of Enrico Mandirola, the great-grandson of the estate’s founder, the domaine is nearly 11 hectares at around 350-400m in altitude, all meticulously farmed without systemics or herbicides – a notable contrast to the larger concerns buying up estates and beginning to pump out oceans of anonymous timorasso - a sure sign the grape’s “made it” – but a worrying development in the region. Similarly, Enrico is a steadfast believer in concrete elevage for his wines, standing athwart the fashion for oaky voluptuousness. Instead of playing into the grape’s weight, Enrico coaxes a nervy tension out of the grape, recalling to mind a warm vintage loire chenin with a hint of salinity.