The Generous Queen of the hills
Popular, generous and rough, from tavern and “pintoni”, little paid and bad to the farmers, Barbera wine is the tradition of Piedmontese drinking. A name that always means Piedmont, but even more Monferrato Asti, its land of choice. By the way, here in Piedmont is «the» Barbera, as feminine as Carducci wanted it: «generosa Barbera» and Pascoli: «purpurea Barbera». For many centuries simply called “vino nigro”, or even indicated by other names although the vine was known and widespread, its name appears for the first time in a land register of Chieri only in 1514 and then probably in a Nicese document of 1609 .
What is certain is that Barbera as we know it today was born only after the mid-nineteenth century and only thanks to studies on the variety of characters such as the Marquis Leopoldo Incisa della Rocchetta. Since then this wine that wanted to be a substitute for the many “grapes” in circulation has come a long way, until today it enters the Olympus of the great wines of the world. Modern, softer and “fat”, but it seems with the unmistakable backbone: what a little joy it gives a lackluster Barbera!