Conversion in Piedmont
OF ALL the world's great wines, barolo always struck me as the most rebarbative and incomprehensible. The barolos I came across at tastings seemed to be built like old-fashioned tanks or rhinos — heavy, lumbering, massively armoured by a pro- tective shield of tannin through which nothing soft, or appealing showed through. Italophiles obstinately maintained that these could be among the world's most complete, satisfying red wines; I was not convinced, though a 1958 Barolo tasted Wind was a pleasant surprise, was a power- ful and intriguing scent of game and tar. Eventually I decided to visit Barolo's homeland, the steep but lowish Langhe hills around the town of Alba, south of Turin. Alba, for all the severe red-brick beauty of its towers, is not Siena. The Pledmontese, like the Burgundians, take food and wine very seriously indeed, partly Perhaps because there is not so much else to distract them. It is no accident that barolo and barbaresco, which were prob- ably the first Italian wines to be bottled, back at the beginning of the last century, were also the first to be granted DOCG, the tightened up version of DOC, offering a guarantee of origin (better not to consid- er what that says about DOC itself), in 1980. The sternness of these tough, strong, long-lasting red wines reflects the land- scape and the people who make them. The Pledmontese, I quickly discovered, are not the smiling, gesticulating Italians of north- ern mythology and films like A Room With
View. They are a dour lot. And the landscape of the Langhe, though it has a subtle attraction, possesses none of the obvious, dramatic beauty of Tuscany. When I was there, in November, you could not see much of the landscape, because it was permanently swathed in a ghostly grey mist. All the little villages, Perched on the tops of the conical hills to resist successions of pillaging invaders, have belvederes from which on clear days You can admire the majestic backdrop of the Alps. I never saw a single alp. Fog is in a way appropriate, for the red grape which produces barolo and bar- baresco, other, lesser Piedmontese red Wines, but nothing notable anywhere else In the world, is called nebbiolo -- foggy. Nebbiolo ripens late — not before mid- October, when the mist has already begun to rise from the Tanaro valley and shut out the views. Needing all the sun it can get, nebbiolo is planted only on the south sides of these intensively cultivated hills.
Nebbiolo, vinified in a modern manner, with a few days' rather than weeks' mac- eration, can produce wine with rich gener- ous fruit and warm, enveloping bouquet. Aldo Conterno, whom I visited at his spick-and-span winery outside the Barolo village of La Morra, started me off with his Favot, a new-style nebbiolo with the gener- ous, fleshy appeal of a good cru beaujolais. This wine has caused a rift between Aldo and his staunchly conservative brother Giovanni, though Aldo's Barolo is as traditionally made — 40 days or more on the skins — as any. The 1982 Granbussia was closed but for once I discerned concen- trated fruit behind the tannic armour. It was the 1978, given to me as a leaving
present and drunk back in England, which bowled me over here was a wine of much greater power than cru classe bordeaux, but comparable complexity of structure. It had more of the chewy density, though not of course the sweetness, of vintage port. The last glasses, drunk on their own, were the most satisfying of all: such wines as these, which the Italians call vini da medi- tazione, are really a meal in themselves. (Selected wines from both conternos are available from Wincellars, 153-5 Wands- worth High Street.)
Barbaresco must have the lowest horse- power of any major wine town in the world. There is just a street and a tiny square with a church at one end. Behind an electronic door on that street, though, is a five-storey winery of awesome sophistica- tion. Angelo Gaja, who charges premier cru classe prices for the wines from his family estate, looks more like a film-star than a wine-maker. His voluptuously rich barbarescos, however, which belie the theory that barbaresco is lighter than its big brother barolo, are wines of star quality. Gaja also makes perhaps the most sophisti- cated chardonnay I have encountered from southern Europe. He sells very little wine in Britain (the only importer I have found is Valvona and Crolla of 19 Elm Row, Edinburgh); but says he does not need to.
Harry Eyres
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