Many Barbaresco producers also remain wary of marketing, with limited international activities or producers’ associations beyond the regional consorzio. In 2023 – the year of our inaugural Italy Report – despite our sincere desire to give the region its due, we found there weren’t quite enough samples to justify a standalone report. This is partly because it is a much smaller region, with less than half the vineyard area and a third the annual production of its neighbour. Also, as Guido Martinetti of the ambitious new Mura Mura points out, only in the Barbaresco commune itself are most vineyards dedicated to Barbaresco production, with Dolcetto and Moscato in Treiso and Barbera in Neive, and even non-grape crops playing a comparatively important role (though these two communes are very exciting areas of growth, as shown in this report).

Finally, much of the Barbaresco sent to us at the Consorzio in 2023 was made by producers headquartered in Barolo, making a separate report seem slightly redundant. While many Barbaresco wines from Barolo producers remain in the 2024 Report (Elvio Cogno’s Bordini is a wonderful example of site-sensitive winemaking), we were heartened by the substantial bump up in submissions from both regions, justifying the separation of the two and permitting, we hope, a more careful investigation of Barbaresco in its own right.

For in some ways, Barbaresco seems especially well positioned for our current wine world moment, one more taken with the mystique of the humble farmer-producer – like Cascina delle Rose, La Ca’Nova or Fontanabianca – than the aristocratic (or simply well-funded) estate holder. More pertinent still is the fact that the ‘new wave’ style of both Barolo and Barbaresco is arguably just the natural style of Barbaresco, where generally sandier soils, lower average altitudes and a milder climate due to the Tanaro’s air currents have historically produced a gentler, more approachable Nebbiolo. The MGAs (the region’s cru system), a critical plank in the prestige of both regions, are much simpler to understand in Barbaresco, where there are only 66 (vs. Barolo’s 181), and even the largest ones like Treiso’s Meruzzano or Neive’s Canova are dwarfed by Barolo’s immense Bussia or Bricco San Pietro.

One elephant in the room is the spectre of modernism, which swept up many Barbaresco producers (or at least those whose wines were broadly exported) much the way it did producers in Barolo’s La Morra. Witnessing the success of pioneers like Gaja and the Barolo Boys, many repudiated the naturally pale hue and perfumed delicacy of their wines, leaning on rapid extraction and new barriques for oomph. This style, which sometimes tipped into caricature, is almost entirely gone and even its original models have tempered their styles. Gaja’s wines, for instance, show scant evidence of oak handling, their luscious fruit complemented by herbal and medicinal tones more at home in a perfumery than a tonnellerie. However, in a collector culture that fetishises so-called traditionalism (I will explain the ‘so-called’ shortly) any hint of modernism is suspect.

Another factor possibly denying Barbaresco the equal billing I and many others feel it entirely deserves is that the region is not especially well understood. So much has been written about Barolo that it occupies an entire row of my home bookshelf, while the section on Barbaresco is much slimmer. In the 2021 edition of his Barbaresco MGA book (which has been invaluable in preparing this report), mapping expert Alessandro Masnaghetti notes that the data presented – a big step up from the 2016 edition – needs to be viewed as a work in progress, as many holes in our understanding of the region’s geology and soils remain.

Throughout this report you will find references to the more recent, finer-grained Sant’Agata marl and older, coarser Lequio, the Langhe’s two key geological formations. Gradual tilting of the land toward the northwest and subsequent erosion have exposed Lequio formation strata in the southeast while the northwest remains cloaked in Sant’Agata marl, much as in Barolo. However, Barbaresco commune is almost uniformly clay-dominant Sant’Agata marls and because the best-known sites – Asili, Montestefano, Rabajà – are there, the general view had been that Barbaresco is less diverse (though a side-by-side comparison of Asili with Rabajà readily contradicts that stance).

South-lying Treiso is much higher in Lequio formation-derived soils, with relatively rigid structures underpinning their bright aromatics (see Rizzi’s Nervo for a brilliant example). Neive is split, with more Lequio in southeastern areas like Bricco di Neive and Bric Micca (see Luigi Einaudi’s Bric Micca) and clay-heavy Sant’Agata marls in northwestern areas like Starderi and Albesani (try the iconic Castello di Neive’s Santo Stefano, a vineyard within the latter). Hopefully the broader range of styles from an expanded range of sites, especially in rapidly developing Neive and Treiso, will underscore the diversity here.

The winemaking, as noted before, has largely taken a turn towards ‘traditional’, which has helped clarify the effects of site. The way the wines for this report (and our Barolo report) were tasted, open label with each producer’s full range tasted in a single flight, should also help highlight the specific contributions of site. However, I would caution that judging the wines purely by the size of their wooden ageing vessels is unproductive. Speaking with Marco Rocca of La Ca’Nova, he concurs that while the current regional style utilises many traditional techniques, including submerged cap (cappello sommerso) maceration, the wines are in fact substantially different from the past.

Part of this is a warmer climate that has largely eradicated green tannins, which Rocca says would persist regardless of how long the wines were aged. I would add that the use of stems, popular today for their ability to absorb some alcohol and add savouriness, would have been unthinkable in cooler times. Rocca says extraction and maturation times are indeed extensive today, but nothing like in the past when, I would note, tanks were often left to macerate while other urgent agricultural tasks were attended to. Finally, though it is true the vessels in the region are now mostly large, many – like Rocca – have embraced tight-grain, untoasted Austrian oak rather than, or alongside, Slavonian botti. Others, like Mura Mura, are utilising alternative vessels like Clayver, a ceramic vessel with the oxygen exchange of small vessels without the characteristic spice of oak. The style is, to use a term Gaja first employed more than a decade ago, decidedly post-modern, with individual producers leaning (gently) in all different directions.

To come back to 2021, it is a vintage with that elusive combination of immense expressiveness – shared by the 2020 vintage – with robust structure more reminiscent of 2019, though without the latter’s jitteriness. With plentiful water reserves at the beginning of the season, the vines suffered only moderately from a cooler spring that lightly reduced yields. Warmth only truly arrived in the late summer, but with great diurnal variation, culminating in a reasonably classic October harvest. The resultant style is one that fully plays to the new Barbaresco’s strengths and is worth vigorously hunting down and cellaring for a decade or more.