ITA / ENG
Vite di Roccia
Taming the Rock
Federica Mingolla for Vigna Sassorosso
We’re up in the mountains here, where only climbers and plants dare to venture. Federica Mingolla, mountain guide, climber and Salewa athlete takes us to the foot of a rock which she confronts with bare hands and that Vigna Sassorosso takes on with its vine roots. Two parallel stories, driven by the same, unrelenting strength: instinct.
Roots ever deeper
There was a time when the Adda Valley was overridden by ice. A land picked clean, lifeless. Everything was covered by a two-kilometre thick glacier which only let giants emerge: the tops of the mountains. Twenty thousand years later, that place has become the the home of a vine which, however, is still coming to terms with this ancient past. We gave it the name “Sassorosso”.

Slowly, year after year, the glacier withdrew and Nature took back possession of the valley. The rest of the work was done by vine growers with perseverance and sheer brute force, bringing back the earth to a rocky moraine.
Now you know where Vigna Sassorosso put down its roots.
Nobody explains to a vine what to do.
It comes naturally.
In a hostile environment and lacking the soil needed to grow, the vine survived the only way it could: by adapting itself.

Instinct took over. After a few centimetres of soil, the roots of Sassorosso go into the stone, sinking into the parent rock and carrying on into the subsoil, looking for nourishment and, incredibly, they find it.
Turning weakness into strength.
The first impression on the palate is an overall feeling of great elegance. The fact is that Vigna Sassorosso is no ordinary Nebbiolo: it displays balance, harmony and intense fruity notes.

Silky and dense tannins. A remarkable delicacy considering the difficulty of finding nourishment. And then an unexpected burst of flavour, practically savoury, lent by the micro-elements that have been absorbed. And this is what the parent rock has passed on to the vine, and from the vine to the grape and from the grape to the wine.

This is why if the vine had never encountered the rock, we would never have encountered Vigna Sassorosso.
Vigne di montagnaa
Sassorosso
ROCCIA
Federica Mingolla
Born in 1994 in Turin, Federica was the first Italian woman to free climb the Tom et Je Ris (Verdon, France), the Digital Crack on the Mont Blanc massif and “Attraverso Il Pesce” in Marmolada in a single day. As a graduate in sport science in Turin (SUISM), a mountain guide, professional sport climber, mountaineer and technical consultant for the Italian Sport Climbing Federation, Federica is one of the most interesting Italian athletes in rock climbing and mountaineering in Europe.
She joined the Salewa team in 2022.