Bully for Barbaresco

While browsing the aisles of my local bottle shop, I came across a Barbaresco wine that I remembered fondly from last year’s vacation to Italy, so I naturally took one home to drink immediately, and another to lay down in the cellar to enjoy later.
For those not familiar with Barbaresco, it is actually the name of the village in northwestern Italy where the wine is produced, rather than the name of the grapes the wine is made from.
For historical reasons that only make sense to stuffy old-world wine snobs, the term Barbaresco is a DOCG. The English version of DOCG roughly translates to Controlled Designation of Origin Guaranteed.
In a nutshell, it means that wine with a Barbaresco label on the front is guaranteed to have been produced in a particular collection of vineyards located in the Piedmont region in the northwest corner of Italy, nestled between the foothills of the Alps and the Appenine Mountains, which provides a favourable microclimate that has allowed the grapes to thrive for millennia.
The actual grape varietal that is used for Barbaresco is called Nebbiolo, although tiny amounts of other varietals are sometimes blended in to make a smoother flavour profile.
The history of Nebbiolo grape goes all the way back to the first century, with none other than the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder waxing poetic about the joys of the wine from this particular region.
The Nebbiolo grape is very special, loaded with polyphenols to give the wine a full body, as well as relatively high acidity, which allows the wine to age well for decades without spoiling.
For hundreds of years, Barbaresco wines were sweet dessert wines, due to the fermentation technology available at the time. Since the grape does not ripen until late October, the temperatures were cool enough that fermentation would stop while there was still some residual sugar in the wine.
It was not until the 1890s that a crafty winemaker figured out that a heated fermentation tank could fully ferment all the residual sugar, resulting in the dry wine that is more common today.
This was a godsend for the local winemakers, as dry wines commanded a much higher price, setting Barbaresco on a path to becoming a premium wine. By the 1960s, Barbaresco was considered a premium wine, and was priced accordingly, much to the delight of the winemakers in the region.
Strict regulations on the production of Barbaresco require the wines to be aged for a minimum of two years, with at least one year in oak barrels, although most producers age their wine for longer before bottling. Annual production is quite small, with around 700 hectares under vine, producing 4.3 million bottles per year. This is less than 1% of the total Italian wine produced each year, so finding a nice Barbaresco at my local bottle shop is always a treat!
These wines tend to be quite tannic when bottled, so most wine snobs recommend aging them in your own cellar for an additional 5+ years before opening them, which softens the rough edges, leaving floral aromatics reminiscent of violets, with flavours of licorice and leather coming out as the wine continues to age.
If you would like to pick up a bottle of Barbaresco, be warned they can be a bit on the pricy side. Expect to pay $50-$80 for the average Barbaresco, with the rare vintages quickly rising to hundreds of dollars per bottle.
Since there are so many great wines available for under $25, it makes Barbaresco a special occasion wine, something to put down in the cellar for a few years before cracking it open. I always have a few bottles aging in the wine cellar that I rotate out when they get sufficiently dusty to look well-aged enough to impress, so if patience is one of your virtues, give this a try!