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?

I Left My Heart in Barbaresco

High on a hill, it calls to me

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.