Marchesi di Barolo, tradition and legend

I visited Barolo and toured the traditional winery of Marchesi di Barolo, a cellar that rightfully belongs to the winemaking history of the Langhe and beyond. During the visit, I had the opportunity to spend a good half day in the company of Ernesto Abbona. As well as being the owner, Ernesto is a representative of the fifth generation of the family that has run the winery since 1929, ever since Pietro Emilio Abbona, already a Barolo producer, managed to purchase the estate from the Opera Pia Barolo, founded in the previous century directly by Marchesa Juliette Colbert de Maulévrier. The Marchesa, widow of Tancredi Falletti, Marchese di Barolo, French by birth and accustomed to the taste of the great reds already being made across the Alps at that time, was the one who, together with oenologist Oudart and the Count of Cavour, essentially invented modern Barolo.

Ernesto accompanied me throughout the available time, guiding me through the historic cellars and showing me their main areas: the barrel room, the barrique cellar, the room with stainless steel tanks, the historic cellar where bottles of varying ages are aged. We covered many topics, from agronomic matters to the maceration of Nebbioli, from the use of wood to strictly commercial issues. Not to mention some personal and family anecdotes.

In fact, at the beginning, certainly due to my excitement, I felt confused and disoriented. I was inside one of the places that made the history of Barolo and was talking with a member of one of the leading families that helped create it. Indeed, with someone who in practice continues the tradition of the legendary figures already mentioned. Talking about wine, however, the emotion evaporated within a few minutes, faster than the carbon dioxide produced during the alcoholic fermentation of wines... after a short while I already had the feeling that I had known Ernesto for a long time.

Today Marchesi di Barolo manages a vineyard of around seventy hectares and produces on average over one and a half million bottles divided across around forty labels. About 15% of the bottles are Barolo, bottled in six different versions. As well as the historic crus such as Coste di Rose, Cannubi and Sarmassa, we are talking about the Barolo tradizione, the Barolo del Comune di Barolo and the Barolo Riserva. There is also the Rocche dell'Olmo, a cru from the municipality of Verduno, which contributes to the making of the Barolo tradizione. "Barolo is the fruit of this great grape variety that is Nebbiolo, which across the great diversity of soils in this area, of microclimates and expositions, gives rise to wines that can be very different from one another. Nebbiolo is never the same as itself: this is also why the traditional Barolo blends wine from different crus".

"Why don't you bottle the Rocche dell'Olmo separately, listing the cru on the label?"

"At this moment I don't think there is sufficient market space for an additional version of Barolo. It's the same reason why for now we are not investing in other Barolo crus, in Barolo or in other municipalities of the appellation. There's no guarantee the market would understand it. And then each Barolo must have its own personality and its own justification. Like Coste di Rose, Cannubi or Sarmassa, very different from one another. Or like the Barolo della tradizione, which is born precisely from the blending of multiple Nebbioli from Barolo that are first vinified separately. And into whose blend the Rocche dell'Olmo also enters". And then there is the great Cannubi, perhaps the most representative vineyard of the entire area. "We own over seven hectares of Cannubi, the central vineyard of the Barolo area. On the Cannubi hill, the geological formations of both the more compact soils that emerged from the sea in the older Helvetian era and the more recent Tortonian soils, richer in sand and silt, meet and blend together. In this territory the ideal conditions are therefore created for producing a Barolo of great distinction, one that has aromas, balance and harmony from the very first years of evolution in the bottle, yet is capable of maintaining these extraordinary characteristics throughout its exceptional longevity". Every vineyard, every fermentation tank, every bottle has its precise place.

As does the use of different types of wood have its exact explanation. "Here at a certain point there was talk of a revolution in Barolo, of shortening macerations and introducing the use of barriques. But an interpretation like that is in reality strongly limiting and approximate. Starting from the 1980s, with the progressive restructuring of the vineyards, with the use of Guyot training in rows spaced 2.60/2.70 m apart, with 90 cm between the vines and the resulting control and thinning of the grapes on the vine, we witnessed an improvement in the product, with an increase in the sugar and polyphenol content of the grapes and the maximization of possible quality at the end of each harvest. With a product like this we would have had to extend the various processing phases, from vinification to aging in wood, with a considerable impact on production timescales and the investments required. Technology helped us, for example with automated pump-overs. And the use of small wood – barriques and tonneaux – alongside traditional Slavonian oak casks, allowed us to limit the time the wine spends in the cellar, bringing about an acceleration of the wine's maturation processes". In short, nothing was left to chance.

Nor is the presence of the beautiful casks left to chance – the ones I photographed and decided to use to illustrate this article. I am talking about 5 large casks of over 150 hectoliters, which have almost 200 years of history and were already present since the time of the Marchesa. Ernesto showed me a photographic document relating to the stages of their cleaning from tartrates, carried out after over a century of use, explaining: "Wood, if properly cared for, is practically eternal. The replacement of large casks can be kept to a minimum. These casks still allow today for aging a portion of the Nebbiolo da Barolo, bringing elegance and pleasantness to the wine". We walk past one of these, currently empty of wine but saturated with sulphur dioxide and waiting to be used again.

Leading me into the remote rooms where several thousand historic bottles still rest, some of them over a century old, Ernesto proudly points out how, in addition to marking the history of his family and of Marchesi di Barolo, those bottles have also accompanied the history of Italy and of Italy in the world. In doing so he shows me, for example, a travel letter from the lands of the Middle East from the first half of the last century. He then points out, with a hint of emotion, some very old bottles, some from the late nineteenth century: "in this niche are kept the bottles from all the oldest vintages; there are still some with the Abbona label, bottles produced by my family before the acquisition of Marchesi di Barolo. I still remember that in my grandmother's time some from the late 1800s were regularly opened...".

We make our way to the guest house to have lunch together. "Our restaurant is not even particularly well signposted. We have sometimes directed some of our clients to other restaurants in Barolo, since our service is not exactly that of preparing dishes à la carte. Rather it is that of letting guests try some foods from the typical cuisine of the territory, offered paired with a glass of one of our wines, varied according to a carefully considered selection".

Chapeau.