If Burgundy is the temple of terroir, and now the altar to hype and the unaffordable, Barolo is fast becoming the alternative new cult for the poor folk who are not billionaires or retain some sense of value for money. For those obsessed with the terroir-driven Pinot Noir, the Nebbiolos of the Langhe offer a nostalgic flashback to some of what Burgundy used to be: a complicated patchwork quilt of vineyards, but here with multiple valleys and all points of the compass as opposed to the generally easterly facing ridge of the Cote d’Or(ient); a bunch of families and winemakers trying to define their terroir with one grape variety, and prices that just about remain on earth and have not yet ascended into the celestial stratosphere. In the Langhe, stone walls have not been laid down since the Cistercian monks, the appellations not codified for decades. The map is more fluid and still being transcribed. And the possibilities of soil, geology, exposure, slope and altitude are even more varied. One look at the fabulous 3D map of Barolo (La Mappa Ufficiale) clearly shows the plethora of hills that range from 200 to over 500 metres high, whereas in Burgundy few vineyards top 350. And there are vineyards on every slope at every angle, on varying soils. You can even throw in a bit of river temperature influence. As such it is more multifaceted than Burgundy, geology, altitude and exposition.
But it really is work in progress. For my birthday I received ‘Barolo Terroir – Grapes Crus People Places’ by Ian d’Agata and Michele Longo. At over 500 pages it’s a weighty tome and I wish they’d used an editor as there is a lot of repetition and very specific detail that could have been edited out to make it a little more digestible, but the amount of knowledge and information is incredible. It is the definitive bible of Barolo and even better in that though of course it mentions producers, it’s mainly about the grapes and the places and is mercifully free of pages of irrelevant tasting notes that are a) personal b) out of date by the time you read them and c) largely meaningless – one snapshot of one wine on a specific day assessed by one palate. It is much less boring, and more educational, to explore district by district, vine by vine.
And the word district is important, something I’d not focussed on before. You tend to think of the different villages in the same way that you do in Burgundy, so La Morra could be Chambolle, Serralunga might be Vosne etc, but then it’s tempting to fall into the easy mistake of believing that the recently appointed MGAs (menzione geografica aggiuntiva – additional geographical mention) are the individual vineyards or lieux dits. Following this (misplaced) logic, you could say perhaps that a Bussia in Monforte could be like a Clos Vougeot in Burgundy. Okay, a sense of place and, hopefully, of taste. A flavour profile. This particular climat/lieu dit/vineyard/cru tastes of X and that separate one over there tastes like Y.
But then you look at the map and read the book (the two really are essentials for anyone deeply interested in Barolo) and you realise that this is plainly ridiculous. Yes, the locals love to refer to ‘crus’ but this is the loosest appropriation of the French term. The two largest MGAs in Monforte – Bussia and Bricco San Pietro, cover more hectares - each of them – than the whole of Chambolle-Musigny with all its designated vineyards (two grand crus, twenty-five premiers and around a dozen individual village plots). You also have almost twice as much difference in altitude between the lowest and the highest village vines (the Burgundian grand and 1e crus sitting mid-slope in-between). To claim that Bussia is a single vineyard with its own distinct terroir is to make a mockery of the concept. It's also bigger than all of Pommard, Morey-Saint-Denis, Volnay or Puligny-Montrachet, etc… It would also swallow up all the Castiglione Falleto MGAs or I think Verduno. Crazy.
And talking of Bussia, the great Rinaldi cantina has just released their first Bussia, which will doubtless reset the price expectations of that MGA, though I don’t know where the actual vines are. Down at 200 metres or up at 450? Facing north-east or all the way round the compass to north-west? Just on the outskirts of the town of Monforte or all the way up north beyond Serralunga and opposite Castiglione Falleto? You cannot possibly expect all that to taste the same, all be it labelled ‘Bussia’.
Hence the need for subdivisions such as Bussia Soprano and ‘Central’ Cannubi to try to get closer to the real ‘grand cru’ area and even then, you’d need further vineyard delimitations. So, there is still a ton of work to do. Sadly, all the label does today is give you a very approximate geography, and, probably more importantly, the grower. Even then it oftens omits the village, so your ‘Barolo Perno’ just presumes that you know it’s in Monforte. And, of course, there are still some domaines such as the peerless Bartolo (now Maria-Teresa) Mascarello that give you just one blended village wine. They eschew the trend to sub-divide and ape Burgundy, and some cynics might also say to grab some of the priceless star dust that single vineyard Burgundian-style terroir brings. Indeed, as Mascarello includes vineyards from both La Morra and Barolo, in Burgundy the wine would have to be declassified to simple Bourgogne as it crosses village boundaries which is forbidden.
The other fact that leaps out of the introduction to the book is the importance not just of place (as in sun exposure, slope, drainage, shade, geology and soil) but of vine material, a subject that most of us amateurs know very little about. Everyone bangs on about terroir, but who includes the actual vine in that all-encompassing notion?
Which rootstock is used and then which vine material grafted on top? Massal selection or clone? These days the trend is very much pro massal selection – picking the best vines from your own vineyard, that have proven themselves over time and guarantee a nice genetic complexity as opposed to the one identical nursery clone that is picked because of its resistance to disease, its crop yield or some particular flavour profile. I think most users of clones nowadays use several different ones to give more genetic heterogeneity and not put all their eggs into one basket, but beyond that it raises some interesting questions.
Ian is obviously both an expert and a scientist, and I am very much neither, so trying to paraphrase a learned dissertation into a few lines is an arrogant fool’s errand, but without getting too much into semantics or being overly loose with language, there are three predominant Nebbiolos – Lampia (probably the father of all), Michet (as famed in G. Mascarello’s Monprivato vineyard) and Rose. There are also the more local Nebbiolos such as Chiavennasca in the Alpine Valtellina in Lombardy and Picotener in Val d’Aosta/Carema.
All are ‘Nebbiolo’ but have presumably grown into their place over the centuries. Indeed, if you jump back to the Cote d’Or, the ‘Pinot Gouges’ in Nuits St Georges is a naturally occurring mutation of Pinot Noir into a white grape in the vineyards of Domaine Gouges. So, when some growers tried to experiment with planting Chiavennasca in the Langhe it was not a success. After all, why would Langhe’s clay-limestone soil and climate suit vines that are used to the very different Alpine geology and climate? This raises one other thought that had never crossed my mind. As regards massal selection, yes sure, picking your best vines to replant your own vineyard makes a lot of sense on every front, genetic, environmental and qualitative. But Ian then throws in a comment about the trend to transplant across thousands of miles.
It's a thought provoking comment (one of many in the book). Of course it’s great on your marketing brochure, in your new vineyard in California or Tuscany to say, wow, look at us, our initial vine cuttings came from Chateau Lafite or Margaux. Ooh, the prestige, the premier cru quality (& price) – will some of it rub off here? But from a terroir or environmental viewpoint it’s more like a high-risk punt. Why should vines that have thrived for centuries and adapted to the maritime climate, gravel croupes of the Medoc like it in the very different geology and weather of the USA or Italy? It rather turns terroir on its head, again.
And as for your Nebbiolo, once you think you have worked out your preferred growers and MGAs, then you need to know the almost impossible – just what is the vegetal material being used? It would seem that if Nebbiolo Lampia is now all conquering, a few decades ago Michet (possibly a virus-affected Lampia) was the quality star for its smaller, skinnier bunches which give higher skin to juice ratio, i.e. more punch in the days when yields were much higher (ie giving more dilute juice) and when growing seasons often struggled to reach full ripeness before global warming. Nowadays in Burgundy we all love vintages affected by millerandage (shot berries) as smaller berries with that higher skin to pulp ratio give, guess what, more concentrated wines, though perhaps that’s no longer an advantage in the ever more frequent heatwave vintages when sugars are already off the scale. As for Nebbiolo biotypes, just a generation or two ago, Michet v Lampia was not a quality debate but a quantity one. A few (very few) growers could focus on the higher concentration but lower yield Michet, but the majority of grapes in those days were sold off in bulk to make generic Barolo (there were no single vineyards bottlings) and priced by weight, in which case the skinny Michet was an economic impossibility for the majority of wineries struggling for subsistence. As Nicolas Oberto at Trediberri told us, his parents made more money from growing chickpeas between the rows than grapes in the now hallowed, top ten Rocche d'Annunziata vineyard. Planting Michet was a luxury only possible for the rich. Times have changed a bit.
Just to close off the loop, with more and more sunshine now, those treasured hilltop vineyards (no shade, endless 360 degree light) are now perhaps overheating and maybe the less trendy Nebbiolo Rose, known for its lighter colour, weight and perfumed aromatics, is coming to the fore, especially as it is more drought, disease and sun resistant and crops highly, except that much of it was ripped out a few years ago. Indeed, few seem to know what and/or where it really is nowadays. If the fashion in the 90s was for dark, extracted and concentrated wines, nowadays it’s more for lighter, transparent colours, elegance and floral aromatics. Audrey Hepburn has replaced Arnold Schwarzenegger!
And that’s before anybody even thinks of donning their geological hat and delving into the predominant formations and soil types of the Langhe. Whether your vineyard grows more on limestone, clay, sandstone, this marl or that makes a difference. Vena del Gesso, Santa Agata fossil marls, Diano sandstone or Lequio formation? From the Messinian, Tortonian or Serravallian age? The colour, weight, power and tannin – or the aromatic exuberance and perfume, seems largely dependent on what your vines stick their roots into. You can match formation with age and, very roughly, with commune – though of course they overlap and some of the ridiculously huge MGAs straddle them. In short, in descending scale of power/tannin/colour/longevity I guess it’s Serralunga/Monforte/Castiglione/Barolo/La Morra/Verduno in terms of village or Lequio/Diano/Santa Agata/Gresso in soil or Serravallian/Tortonian/Messinian in age. After all, the most majestic, tannic wines of Barolo come from Serralunga and the most ‘feminine’, perfumed and elegant from La Morra and Verduno.
And if you want to take it a step further with a more holistic view of place, use, soil, weather etc, you can map your MGAs to the nine defined ‘Land Units’ which probably gives you a more accurate hint as to the type of wine to expect (apart of course from the huge MGAs that encompass several). To give you an idea, I think La Morra includes five Land Units and the Land Unit of La Morra appears of course in the heart of La Morra, and most of Verduno (Verduno’s own Land Unit appearing only in the western tip of Verduno itself and the northern, adjacent tip of La Morra) but also in the east of Novello, the contiguous south western point of Monforte and a central slice of Barolo. But there are no La Morra or Verduno Land Units in Castiglione or Serralunga…
This seems (well, is) dauntingly complicated, but if you favour the perfumed elegance of, say, Monvigliero, the superstar of Verduno, and/or Rocche dell Annunziata, Brunate, Cerquio of La Morra or Rue of Barolo and Ravera of Novello then if I read my overlay of maps correctly, they are all on the La Morra Land Unit. It’s almost a vertical strip from Verduno through La Morra and Barolo to Novello.
Got that?!
If you are now even more confused by the multiplicity of factors defining so called ‘terroir’ in Barolo, well, welcome to the club. The one major positive though is that in the Langhe, though the producer is still primordial as regards pricing, the MGA is much less so than in, say, Burgundy. Yes, a top producer’s Richebourg will fleece you for thousands per bottle, but any bottle from anyone with that grand cru on the label will fetch an exorbitant price. Not so (yet) in Barolo – Burlotto’s Monvigliero or Rinaldi’s new Brunate will set you back 400 euros and more, but you can still find those MGAs from other decent producers for a fifth of the price or less. I cannot possibly afford any grand cru from Vosne, Chambolle or Gevrey, but the top MGAs still offer plenty of possibilities outside the handful of cult cantinas.
All I can say is buy the map, and the book, and go study. What I personally found as useful as it was interesting was that the two authors list their favourite MGAs (and some of the producers’ fancies too). If you can cross reference this with your preferred producers and your personal taste, then you might be getting somewhere.
When I then had a look at my brief notes on Barolos I’ve tasted, I had tracked both village and MGA (where one existed of course) and was frankly surprised, and rather happy to discover that of my top 11 MGAs, 10 made it onto both authors’ hit list. This is not to show what a brilliant palate I have (I wish…), but to make the point that place really does matter and that I for one need to remember that fact when buying. It’s a subject that definitely demands a lot of further investigation
And that, of course, requires a lot of tasting.
Purely for intellectual purposes of course.
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For the record we don’t get to drink that many top MGA Barolos, but ones that we have enjoyed the most came from:
· Monvigliero in Verduno
· Monprivato, Villero and Fiasco in Castiglione Falleto
· Francia and Vigna Rionda in Serralunga
· Bussia (Soprano) and Ginestra in Monforte
· Cannubi in Barolo
· Rocche d’Annunziata and Brunate in La Morra.
And the point is that the wines were not all from star producers. I also have to say that the blended Barolos of Bartolo Mascarello and Giuseppe Rinaldi would get onto anyone’s top list. And just to make all of this seem quite pointless, the above list covers a multitude of geological formations, eras and Land Units.
Sorry.
Happy Christmas and I hope that the New Year brings you many delicious moments.
