Fletcher


— About —

Why David decided to live and work in Italy

“I began Fletcher back in 2009, out of the circumstances of falling in love with Nebbiolo, so my initial exposure to Italy where I live now was all because I went to Italy in 2007, to learn about Nebbiolo to be able to produce Nebbiolo correctly in Australia. So it’s all kind of happened by luck and chance that I ended up living there from 2012 onwards, but the production of Fletcher actually started in 2009 with Barolo and Barbaresco which was bought grapes and using other people’s wineries, so there was no physical address. There was no real kind of focus on building vineyards. At that time. It was really just an addition to what I was trying to do in Australia with the Nebbiolo in Australia.

After a while of going back and forth between Italy I was offered a job at Cerreto as a full time winemaker, and that spurred the move to Italy on a full time basis, I also realized that it was much easier for me because I wanted to continue the Italian production to live in Italy and focus on that rather than being in Australia, trying to do the Italian remotely little bit by little bit” – David

The winery 
Former Barbaresco train station

“We started investing in the area we bought the first winery that we have in 2015 which is the old station of Barbaresco. It was completely abandoned. we restructured it we turned it into a winery. Basically now we have two wineries but that winery specifically is housing our Nebbiolo production” – David

The Barbaresco winery solely focuses on the production of Nebbiolo for his Langhe Nebbiolo, Recta Pete Barbaresco and the Cru Barbaresco bottlings.

The second winery/warehouse location was acquired in in 2017 to expand production. In this second warehouse David makes his Chardonnay, Favorita, Langhe Arneis and Moscato along with his bottlings of Barbera & Dolcetto.

Investing in Vineyards

“We moved on from that to start investing into vineyards we started our first vineyard that we planted on our own land was Chardonnay, which is pretty much what spurred on the project of the Chardonnay. We’ve now grown from that initial holdings of Chardonnay, which is about 3000 meters to around four hectares that we own through acquisitions mixed between Chardonnay, Barbera & Nebbiolo and some very interesting local white varietals such as Favorita” – David

Currently the vineyard’s David owns and manages go into his Cantina della Stazione label, Langhe Chardonnay + Nebbiolo along with fruit he acquires from long term grower relationships.

His Barbaresco wines are all sourced currently through growers (he has a small holding in Staderi but the vines are very young at this point and not classified yet). I asked David if he is looking to purchase more Barbaresco vineyards:

“That’s the hardest area to get into because of the price point. It really is astronomical. It’s hard to dish out about between 1.5 to 2 million euros per hectare for a Barbaresco vineyard, so it’s a lifetime to pay that back. You just cannot earn money on the production that you’re producing for the next 20 to 30 years” – David

VINTAGE REVIEW

2022 vintage

“22 was a really unique vintage in the sense that we had very little rainfall during the spring period. It was one of the first times that I think most of the people in that area could remember such a dry Spring and lead into a dry Summer as well. So the vines they had this impression that and certainly the locals thought that everything was going to be really a disaster type of vintage, but in reality what happened was the buds adapted to early drought conditions and kind of balanced themselves off in terms of how much crop they threw out and how they developed the fruit.

It was one of the first years I really saw an equilibrium in the vines with pristine fruit and no sun damage. No shriveling on the berries, which is quite rare. Normally in a standard vintage we will get heat spikes through summer that can sometimes damage exposed fruit. I think most people were smart enough to leave a little bit more leaf area, a little bit more crop on the vines where necessary. It just really helped the maturation of the fruit and the vines even though they were suffering, not having water. The outcome is an earlier picking harvest. Most of my fruit was done around mid September for the Nebbiolo” – David Fletcher

2021 vintage

“2021 On the other hand (comparing to 2022) was just pristine. So we started with good water in the soils from Winter. We went through a spring that had sporadic rainfalls and really helped the growth of the vines. Great development of fruit. Mild post Spring weather going into June/July. Summer there were a couple of warm periods but it didn’t really push too hard on the fruit. We had dry September as well so mild Autumn weather and it allowed the people to make the decision to leave the grapes on the vine alot longer than in 2021.

With a mild temperate weather, you’re allowed to like just leave it let the vines mature the grapes a little bit longer. Build the tannin development and the outcome of that is you get this classical style. So 19 in comparison to that was a little bit cooler, and so you have a tighter structure. So big tannin structure & good depth” – David Fletcher