Barbera

Mm.

I started tasting their wines, and I fell in love with the Grenache and then the Barbera, and, uh, I'm a, I'm a red guy.

I like the reds.

Yeah.

So he, you know, he wasn't, he was kind of going against the Molden Lodi being like the Zen red blends.

He had like a Barbera, a Chenin Blanc, a Vignet, like a, oh my God, he had all these different, like a Cinsault, like all these different crazy wine varietals.

But the best part is, is he literally hand draws everything.

all of his labels

The pricing is so there.

And then also it's, it's a varietal that, Not everybody maybe has seen or has heard of, but the pricing is matching that, that I'm comfortable in taking a chance.

Yeah, that one is a Barbera.

Barbera is one of my favorite varietals.

I did Old Vine, I think Merlot from Colorado.

I did some Barbera from, I don't even remember where it came from.

I mean, I had like everything.

I had like Malbec from also God knows where.

So I did five years with him left as associate winemaker.

But, um,

Did you ever say to Philippe, hey, have you ever thought about blending Barbera with Petite Syrah? Hey,

there's this great thing the kids haven't found out about yet.

Well, there is some similarities.

If you are making wine in Barbera and Barolo, I mean, yes, you can get big, full, heavy, full body, but a lot of it still is Nebbiola and Barbera still are thinner skin grapes.

Those are higher acid reds.

There is some similarity between Barolo and Barbaresco with, say, Burgundy.

Um, we've just released our first Dolcetto.

We grow some Barbera, some Riesling, some Pinot Blanc, and some Pinot Grigio, and, um, a variety.

I love Gewürzt as well.

And so we've restructured it.

I can tell you that Piemonte is the region where maybe the Italian wine started from, along with the Tuscany.

And that area is famous not only for Barbaresco and Barolo, that are well-known worldwide, but the area of Monferrato is the area of Barbera.

Barbera was the wine of the poor people, but now... because the Italian learned how to make wine, you can taste a different variety of Barbera.

Barbera is a red wine.

You can have what we call happy Barbera, which is a bit sparkly, happy because this is the translation of Ivace, which is even soft in terms of alcohol degree, up to very full body Barbera, that in my opinion are even better than the best Barolo.

Then they have Dolcetto.

Dolcetto is a typical wine of Monferrato, particularly the area of Ovada, not far away from Acquiterni.

And it's a typical sweet wine that made your dessert better than ever.

But in the Piedmont, almost every Barolo producer or Barbaresco producer will also make a couple different other wines for everyday drinking.

One of them being Barbera and the other Dolcetto.

And this is Dolcetto d'Alba.

So it comes from the Alba region.

After Phylloxera, winemakers had to make decisions about which grapes they would replant.

Dolcetto gradually lost ground to grapes like Barbera, so less of it was planted.

Just outside of Piedmont, still in Italy, in Liguria, it is planted in Ormeasco, small plantings in the U.S., especially in California, also Washington and Oregon, and tiny amounts in Australia and New Zealand.

But overall, Piedmont is where the majority of Dolcetto is planted.

And when I was researching this, it was really clear to me that Dolcetto plays an important role here in Piedmont and acts as like a important missing puzzle piece.

So when you look at how these grapes ripen, we establish that Nebbiolo is late ripening.

Barbera ripens just a little bit before it, but Dolcetto is early ripening, potentially up to four weeks before Nebbiolo.

Why is this important? And here is the good lesson.