Piedmont Is More Than Just Barolo & Barbaresco

A look into the winemakers and grapes giving Piedmont a new name.

Written by Kate Masters

Artwork by Cerise Zelenetz

The Italian Piemonte started with a bang. Roughly 15 million years ago, the Eurasian and African plates collided, creating the Alps and the rolling hills of the Langhe: home to appellations like Barolo and Barbaresco that have become household names. The crash disrupted ancient seas and contributed to a staggering geological diversity in the region. Real wine nerds will toss around terms like Helvetian sandstone — the most ancient, nutrient-poor soils unearthed in the crash — and Tortonian marl — younger, more calcium-rich soils — to explain why Nebbiolo-based wines grown in vineyards just meters apart can have such different tannins, flavors, and aromatic profiles.

However, the purpose of this article is to go beyond the “Big Bs.” This isn’t to diminish Barolo and Barbaresco, which are home to some of the most concentrated, age-worthy reds in the world. But sometimes I worry that focusing entirely on Piedmont’s most tannic, cellar-able options make the region feel inaccessible to more casual drinkers, who don’t necessarily want to hold onto a wine for 10 years before it’s ready to drink. It’s also easy to forget that Barolo and Barbaresco’s supremacy is only a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of Piedmont.

A brief primer: Piemonte, or Piedmont, is among the most northerly of Italy’s wine-growing regions, surrounded on three sides by the Alps and bordered by Liguria and its access to the Mediterranean Sea. For many drinkers, it’s synonymous with Nebbiolo, a native, thick-skinned red grape variety that historically struggled to ripen in the area’s cool climate — resulting in wines with high tannins and acidity that often needed years to rest before reaching their full potential. 

Let’s go back to the mid-1800s, when Nebbiolo was known as the king of grapes and the grape of kings. Unlike today, the most important production region wasn’t Langhe but an area called Alto Piemonte, roughly 90 miles from Alba at the base of the Italian Alps. The area’s terroir, formed from an ancient super volcano that erupted around 300 million years ago, is unique in Piedmont. Communes like Ghemme, Gattinara and Boca were in high demand among both Milanese natives and Austro-Hungarian royalty for their elegant, high-altitude expressions of Nebbiolo. By the 1990s, these regions were largely forgotten.

What happened? A lot of unfortunate factors, nearly back-to-back. Tariffs imposed on the region’s wines by France and the Austro-Hungarian empire in the mid-1800s were the first death knell. Then, the arrival of powdery mildew, downy mildew, and most of all, phylloxera, which decimated Alto Piemonte vineyards at the turn of the 20th century. Vineyard sites in the Langhe, with its gently rolling hills, were much easier (and cheaper) to replant than those in the steep Alps. Back-to-back world wars and the resulting industrialization only furthered the decline, as many growers in Alto Piemonte traded vineyard work for factory jobs in Milan and Turin.

This context is important because it helped spur the ascendancy of areas like Barolo and Barberesco and their dominance on the Western market as other Piemonte regions declined. With a global audience to appeal to, many Barolo and Barbaresco producers adapted their winemaking in response to broader trends — including growing demand for Burgundy, which many winegrowing regions were emulating at the time. Some of those changes were largely seen as positive: for example, the growth of single-vineyard, or cru, Barolo, which historically was made with grapes sourced from multiple vineyard sites. Others were more controversial, like the growing use of new oak barriques to age Nebbiolo.

Flash back to today, though, and we’re starting to see other parts of Piemonte get their due — especially as high land costs in Barolo and Barbaresco push a new generation of winemakers to other sites in the region. One of my favorite bottles selected for our Piedmont-themed Direct Press wine club in December was the “Cenerina” from Cascina Val Liberata, the husband-wife winemaking team of Maurizio Caffer and Dierdre O’Brien who started their biodynamic estate in Monferrato just over a decade ago. They do cultivate bigger-name Piemonte grapes like Nebbiolo and Grignolino on their white clay soils, but “Cenerina” is 100% Slarina — a red grape variety that nearly disappeared from the region in favor of higher-yielding vines like Barbera. With light, silky tannins and an explosion of pomegranate molasses and hibiscus notes, it’s a Piemonte red meant to be enjoyed young and fresh. As it so happens, Cascina Val Liberata is neighbors with Iuli, one of our other favorite producers in the region, whose winery is just over a hill in the small town of Montaldo di Cerrina. Together, both estates are revitalizing the neglected tradition of viticulture in Monferrato, where much of the vineyard land has been reclaimed by wild forest (unlike the monoculture of grapes in Langhe).

Of course, there are other pioneers working to elevate Piemonte’s forgotten regions. One long-time contributor is Christoph Kunzli of Le Piane, a Swiss-born winemaker who fell in love with the reds of Alto Piemonte after multiple business trips to Italy. In the 1990s, he purchased one of the few remaining estates in Boca after assuring the original owner, Antonia Cerri, that he’d maintain its traditions. He’s stayed true to his word and is one of the only producers in Piemont still working with Maggiorina-trained vines, an ancient trellising system in which three different vines are grown together and trained across four cardinal points (the end result is vines spread high in four different directions, forming a kind of cup around the planting site).

Unlike Barolo and Barbaresco, Alto Piemonte regulations allow other indigenous grapes, like Vespolina and Croatina, to be blended into Nebbiolo-based wines — adding complexity and often freshness. The region’s high-altitude vineyards and volcanic soil also contribute to a different profile of wine — one that’s lighter and spicier than wines produced in the Langhe. To see what I mean, open a bottle of Le Piane’s 2020 “Mimmo Boca,” a blend of 60% Nebbiolo, 30% Croatina and 10% Vespolina with lovely acidity and high, powdery tannins. There are herbal notes of sage and cedar, but also a plump core of concentrated black fruits. Four years after its release, it’s begging to be enjoyed with the richest foods at your holiday table. And Kunzli is adamant about protecting the heritage and identity of what he calls the “original” Nebbiolo region. 

“I have always been clear…we are not a copy of Barolo,” he told author Tom Hyland in his 2016 book The Wines and Foods of Piemonte.

This article was originally published by Vanderbilt Ave Wine Merchants and has been adapted for SWURL.