Why Barolo Bros Get Barbaresco All Wrong
Why Barolo Bros Get Barbaresco All Wrong
Is it time for a new way of thinking about Italy's greatest wine regions?
This article first appeared in The New Wine Review. As an Everyday Drinking reader, you’ll receive an exclusive 50% discount on the price of an annual NWR subscription with the code EVERYDAY50. This includes unlimited access, as well as our subscribers-only Slack community.
Not to bring literary theory into the wine chat, but is there such a thing as the “anxiety of influence” in this realm of culture? I ask because I’ve been struggling to write about Barolo and Barbaresco within a wine world where only certain gatekeepers are “allowed” to hold forth on the wines of Italy’s Piedmont. I adore Barolo and Barbaresco. They’re among my favorite wines in the world. I’ve developed my love for Nebbiolo during a lifetime of traveling to (and occasionally living in) Italy. But when you start writing about wine, no matter how good or experienced you are, you quickly learn that your opinion on Nebbiolo doesn’t matter—especially if it conflicts with common wisdom.
I mean, seriously, are there any regions in the world more gatekept than Barolo and Barbaresco? I have about as big of a wine-writing ego as anyone. Yet for the past few weeks, as I’ve been trying to express my own thoughts and feelings about Nebbiolo in Piedmont, I’ve gone into an existential spiral about why people even like wine in the first place.
The gatekeepers tell us that we must wait, patiently, for Barolo. Of course, Barolo must always be aged a minimum of three years, by law, before it can be released. But even after release, the common wisdom espoused by critics, sommeliers, and influencers is that we must wait another 5 or 10 or 20 years—or longer—before a Barolo is truly ready to drink.
The idea that young Barolo is always too big and aggressive—with growling tannins that might rip your face off—is just one of those deeply ingrained beliefs in our wine culture. This reputation has also fostered a certain machismo around Barolo, as well as a strange gendering that happens when Barolo is compared to its neighboring Nebbiolo-based wine, Barbaresco. We’re often told that Barolo is “masculine,” while Barbaresco is “feminine.”
This gendering of Barolo and Barbaresco, mind you, is not a thing of the past. You’ll still regularly find it in wine media, and the most-referenced book on the region is called Barolo and Barbaresco: The King and Queen of Italian Wine. On my recent trip to Piedmont, last month, I was told by several producers: “We call Barolo the king, and Barbaresco the queen.” At least two others told me: “Barolo is the man. Barbaresco is the wife.”
To be clear, in this cringey metaphor, Barbaresco is stereotyped as “feminine” simply because of its reputation of being “approachable” and ready to drink earlier, with softer tannins. Meanwhile Barolo is defined as “masculine” mainly due to the bolder, harder tannins of its youth, before more years of cellar aging.
How this masculine/feminine thing plays out in America is unsurprising. Dudes love Barolo, and mostly give Barbaresco a pass. A friend who works as wine director for a popular Italian restaurant in Manhattan said she often tries to dissuade men—almost always men—from ordering Barolos that are still too young. But her proposals of Barbaresco at similar or lower price points generally fall on deaf ears. “It’s nearly impossible to sell Barbaresco to guys that demand Barolo,” she says.
Narratives in wine, especially Italian wine, are difficult to change. The reason for this is obvious: There are no term limits in wine criticism. Barolo and Barbaresco have been defined by entrenched gatekeepers—such as my former boss—for at least two decades.
“We have to change the way we communicate about these wines,” said Riccardo Sobrino, winemaker at Cascina delle Rose, when I visited Barbaresco last month. “We have to remember that Barolo and Barbaresco are limited. They’re not for everyone. You have to have some experience. If the first wine of your life is a 2016 Barolo, you will be traumatized.”
Over in Barolo, Sobrino’s girlfriend, Caterina Burzi, takes a contrarian view to the old-school bro-style Barolo. “Maybe Barolo will age a long time, but I want to drink them now. I don’t want to wait,” she told me. Burzi, who runs the winery with her brother Alberto, feels more philosophically in line with younger wine drinkers, who mostly do not want to wait a decade to drink the wines they’ve paid a lot of money for.
Beyond generational tastes, there’s an even larger, looming reason why the way we talk about Barolo must shift. “The climate is changing so fast, and no one knows what is best,” Burzi said. “It’s already changed a lot compared to 20 years ago. Now everyone is tasting Barolo after one year of release and it’s already open and approachable. That was not possible in 1999.”
This was the topic of conversation I found all over Piedmont. “2010 was the last vintage of the old climate,” said Andrea Sottimano, when I visited his Sottimano winery in Barbaresco. “Now we live in an almost subtropical climate. We’ll never have 2010 again. The weather has changed. We’ll never go back.”
Besides climate, other things started changing in the 2010s. Global taste trends moved toward fresher styles of red wine. “2010 was the first vintage in which people started saying. ‘It’s too oaky.’ After 2010, producers began changing away from the style of the 1990s.” Among other shifts, some of the so-called modernist producers moved away from the small French oak barriques they’d employed in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, when you visit cellars in Piedmont, you’re more likely to see giant Austrian oak casks (particularly from high-end barrel makers like Stockinger).
Rather than see the changing styles in the region as a bad thing, I suggest we embrace a new way of talking about Nebbiolo. “I believe we are living in the golden age of the region,” said Erik Revello of Carlo Revello & Figli, a terrific up-and-coming Barolo producer. “People think of Barolo as hard to drink. But there’s a shift to making wines that are much more approachable.”
When I visited Massolino, one of Barolo’s largest producers, the message was similar. “Barolo is no longer the tannic wine we knew in the 1980s and 1990s,” Franco Massolino told me. “Honestly, climate change has helped us. People always think, ‘It’s too early to drink a Barolo.’ That we have to wait 30 years. But it’s not true. People are looking for more elegant wines. Not so much the dense, dark style of before.”
Yet there remains a critical bias against any Barolo vintages that are ready to drink early, though more people within Barolo are pushing back against this notion. “Are vintages like we have now a bad thing? No, I don’t think so,” Massolino said. “This is an opportunity to show a Barolo that’s ready to drink now. To show a vintage that’s understandable and easy to drink, one that’s already round and expressive.”
But Massolino also said something else that felt like heresy in current wine-bro culture, as well as the messaging from Piedmont’s gatekeepers.
“We are known as a Barolo producer, but the Barbaresco is an important wine for us. A little bit lighter, but very elegant, and higher finesse than the Barolo,” he told me. “Barolo has the perception of remaining the king. This is the perception of people, correct or not. I have no difficulties in saying there are top Barbaresco that are as good as the top Barolo. But the perception of Barolo as king remains.”
I found the same thing during my visits in Piedmont—and I found myself drawn again and again to the Barbaresco. So I’ll just say it: Barbaresco may be the best under-the-radar value for a prestige wine in the world. Often, top bottles in Barbaresco are half the price of top Barolo.
“Barbaresco was once a wine that people didn’t understand,” said Michela Adriano, of Adriano Marco e Vittorio. “But now the climate is warmer, and the wine is smoother, more approachable, and more elegant to drink”
Of course, Barbaresco is a completely open secret. Collectors have long embraced the wines of top Barbaresco producers such as Angelo Gaja and Bruno Giacosa, and perhaps—judging from recent price jumps—Roagna. But the roster of excellent Barbaresco producers is much longer, including Sottimano, Cascina delle Rose, Adriano Marco e Vittorio, Lodali, Bruno Rocca, Ca’ del Baio, and others. Many top producers known for Barolo, such Oddero or Massolino, also make very fine Barbaresco.
“Our idea of Barolo is based on the 20 brands we know. But in Barbaresco, can you name 20 brands?” said Sottimano.
At home, I often find that even wine people who are supposedly “experts” in Piedmont don’t really know very much about Barbaresco. How often, for instance, do you hear about great vintages in Barbaresco?
“In Barolo, when those 20 well-known brands have a good or bad vintage, everyone repeats that it’s a good or bad vintage,” said Sottimano. “But in Barbaresco, if Gaja and Giacosa meet for an aperitivo, and they say to each other, ‘Let’s make a joke, let’s tell everyone 2021 is shit.’ If that happened, everyone would say 2021 is shit.” As a matter of fact, the 2021 Barbaresco vintage is excellent, and one that people who love Nebbiolo should jump on.
After weeks of grappling with changing times in Piedmont, the most important takeaways are these: Forget about the gatekeeping. Ignore the anxiety of influence. Reject the idea of “masculine” and “feminine” wines. Embrace change. Long live Nebbiolo.
For my Barbaresco bottle recommendations, click here to visit the New Wine Review.
