Piemonte

Piedmont: the region that invented the concept of great Italian red wine

If there is a region in Italy that more than any other has defined what it means to make red wine of excellence — that has set the parameters, built the international reputation and demonstrated to the world that Italy could compete with Burgundy and Bordeaux — that region is Piedmont. Barolo and Barbaresco are not just two appellations among many: they are the absolute reference point for Italian red wine in the world, the names that open the doors of the finest restaurants in Tokyo, New York and London, the bottles that collectors cellar for decades.

The protagonist is Nebbiolo — Italy's most noble and most unforgiving grape variety. Unforgiving because it forgives nothing: the wrong terroir, the wrong vintage, the wrong hands produce hard, tannic and graceless wines. The right terroir — the Langhe hills of Alba, the soils of Tortona and Caluso, the hills of Gattinara and Ghemme — produces something extraordinary: a wine of almost transparent ruby colour, deceptively light to the eye, that on the nose explodes into a bouquet of dried rose, tar, tobacco, red fruits, truffle and oriental spice, and on the palate reveals a tannic structure and natural acidity that guarantee decade-long longevity. Barolo — produced in the Langhe around Alba, in its eleven municipalities and its historic Menzioni Geografiche Aggiuntive — is Nebbiolo in its most majestic and austere form. Barbaresco — produced just a few kilometres away on slightly different soils, generally a more elegant and earlier-maturing style — is Nebbiolo in its most seductive and refined expression.

But Piedmont's red wines do not end with Nebbiolo. There is also Barbera — the Piedmontese indigenous variety of great drinkability, with a lively natural acidity and a fruit freshness that makes it one of Italy's finest table wines — in its d'Asti and d'Alba expressions. There is Dolcetto, the everyday red of the Langhe, fragrant and tannic, to drink young. There is Grignolino, Freisa, Vespolina — rare indigenous varieties that few producers still cultivate seriously and that tell the story of an older and more secret Piedmontese viticulture than that of the great names.

And then there is Barolo — but not the Barolo of the large commercial producers, not the one found everywhere at inflated prices. Emporio Divino selects artisan Barolo from the small producers of Serralunga d'Alba, La Morra, Castiglione Falletto, Barolo and Monforte d'Alba — those who produce a few thousand bottles per year from specific vineyards, using traditional methods and without commercial compromise. The Barolo that Piedmontese people drink among themselves in the osterie of the Langhe — the kind that rarely leaves the region and that Emporio Divino brings directly to those who know how to recognise it.