The Life and Death of Barbaresco

While shopping in my little Italian grocery store, the one with an oversized selection of Italian wine (only), I happened upon one of the Italian specialists who knows much more about the current market than I do. And I asked them a question. “What’s up with Barbaresco? It’s down there on the lower shelf, and just a few of them. And meanwhile Barolo wines are bulging, overcrowded, eye level, filling the racks. What’s up with that?”

They answered simply, “Barbaresco? Oh, it just died.”

Huh? Did I hear that right? One of my favorite wines in the world, one of the greatest examples of Nebbiolo the world has ever known, has left us?

Come to find out, it’s more like we left it. Abandoned. Orphaned. In lieu of grander and twinklier trappings.

Ah, I get it. A guy dumps his aging wife, the mother of his children, and chases after a younger, perkier trophy. Happens all the time.

So, I ask myself, what happened to Barbaresco? What precipitated its fall from grace in the world that surrounds me? Is it a local thing? Is it an American thing? Is there a problem? Did something happen that I didn’t hear about? My Barbaresco?

I wrote a few years back, “What is it about a place that marks one’s soul? When a place seems more than recognizable the first time one walks in that place, although one had never been there? And that the spirit of the place infuses upon that soul and being, a sense of belonging, of an intimacy that transcends mere time and place? Such is the effect Barbaresco has had upon me for the greater part of my adult life. And it surprised no one more than myself, this attachment, this passion, for a place and its wine.”

How is it that the world I now inhabit doesn’t see that? Does one need to go to Barbaresco to see, to feel, to taste that? What happened?

I’m gobsmacked over this development. I peer into my wine closet and see Barolo and Barbaresco in there. Barolo about 3 to 1 over Barbaresco. OK, a bigger area, more communes. Sounds about right. A few years ago, one would have found more Barbaresco in there than Barolo. But we’ve drank a few and let a few go to collectors, knowing that time isn’t on my side with regards to ever getting to all of the wines in that closet in my lifetime. But, still, no complete abandonment. Not in my neighborhood.

Yes, there are other predicting regions that are beating their drums louder. Etna, Montalcino, Abruzzo. Even Montecucco! But how on earth has one of the greatest appellations for Nebbiolo gotten lost in the fog of wine?

Well, there is Gaja. But Gaja is a universe unto itself. And thankfully there is Produttori del Barbaresco. And Bruno Giacosa, and, and, and…

Someone, somewhere, needs to get to the bottom of this. Worldwide alcohol consumption is faltering, and with it everything is going to slump a little. But calling in the hospice crew for Barbaresco? It’s too soon. We need to get the word out.

I think of our cousins in France, in Burgundy. They went through this some years ago, and they survived it. And while Barbaresco may not be someone’s idea of an Italian Chambertin, it falls into the pantheon of greatness in the universe of Nebbiolo. This isn’t right. Something must be done. 

Italy, are you listening? 

 

© written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

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