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Barbera d'Alba D.O.C.
Variety
100% Barbera
Vineyards:
Location: Castiglione Falletto Villero,
Plot 7, Sub-plots 285, 286, 132
Characteristics: 250 meters above sea level, southern exposure, 2.7 x 0.8 meters spacing, 4,700 vines/hectare density, Guyot upward-trained vertical-trellised training system.
Age: 50 years
Size: 1 hectare
Yield: 80 quintals/hectare
Location: La Morra Roggeri, Plot 21, Sub-plot 498
Characteristics: 280 meters above sea level, southwestern exposure, 2.7 x 0.8 meters spacing, 4,700 vines/hectare, Guyot upward-trained vertical-trellised training system.
Age: 40 years
Size: 0.6 hectares
Yield: 90 quintals/hectare
Harvesting period
Last 10 days of September
Production
10,000 bottles
Vinification
Selection of grapes in the vineyard, fermentation and maceration for about 15 days in stainless-steel containers, followed by malolactic fermentation in November.
Maturing
40% aged in 50-hectoliter French oak barrels, 60% in small 225-liter barrels, for 18 months. Blended in the spring, bottled in the summer.
Sensory characteristics
Intense ruby-red color with purple tinges, a bouquet of fully ripe fruit, with an excellent dash of freshness. Tannins are prominent in the mouth, maintaining the classic Barbera backbone.
Notes
Barbera in literature: In Piedmont both the grape and the wine usually take on the feminine grammatical gender. In fact it’s the only wine which takes the feminine, as elsewhere the grape is feminine and the wine is masculine. However it appears in both genders in the writings of some authors from Piedmont and beyond. The Tuscan Giosuè Carducci, after stays in Piedmont, began to appreciate it, dreaming of “Generous Barbera. Drinking her seems to us – to be alone at sea – challenging a storm.” For Paolo Monelli, a member of the Alpine troops and writer, author of Toes up: A chronicle of gay and doleful adventures of Alpini and mules and wine, Barbera is “the foot soldier of Piedmontese wines, mud-trampler and fog-banisher” with its dry and honest taste, the wine of the social history of 20th-century Piedmont. One of the most enthusiastic literary praisings of Barbera comes from Cesare Pavese, in a letter to a friend: “We ate so well that don’t know how I can tell my Turinese friends about it; the salad of mushrooms such as you can only fine in our parts and a legendary Barbera were an indescribable pleasure”.
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