Italy's Native Wine Grape Terroirs by Ian D'Agata

Author:Ian D'Agata
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520290754
Publisher: University of California Press

BAROLO

Barolo is the only commune of the Barolo production zone that was not built atop a hill (in fact, the town sits down low in an amphitheater), but it boasts an especially beautiful castle (which once used to be the feudal property of the Marchesi di Falletto) that is now the home of Collisioni (www.collisioni.it)—Italy’s biggest annual music, literature, and wine and food festival—as well as of the beautiful Enoteca Regionale del Barolo. Barolo boasts 343.20 hectares under vine (261.49 of which are devoted to Nebbiolo for Barolo production) and thirty MGAs, some of which, like Cerequio and Brunate, are shared with La Morra. The town is indelibly associated with what is the most famous cru of all Barolo: Cannubi. Considered by many to be the very best of all the Barolo vineyards (but just as many would completely and successfully argue that statement), Cannubi experienced such fame that producers have always been inspired to use the Cannubi name in any way possible. And, much as with Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet in Burgundy, we have Cannubi Boschis, Cannubi San Lorenzo, Cannubi Valletta, and Cannubi Muscatel along with Cannubi, which I have qualified in the past as Cannubi proper or Cannubi centrale (D’Agata 2014b). The historical Cannubi extends from the Cascina Viganò to the Cascina Ferrero. Despite this piece of common knowledge, many producers today will tell you that it was common for their parents and grandparents to refer to their vines as being in, or to call their wine simply as, “Cannubi,” even though their vines were actually a part of Cannubi Valletta or Cannubi San Lorenzo; apparently, there was not the habit back then of being so precise with these names. (Cynics might say that it was convenient to be just so.) The irony is that, much like Montrachet, Cannubi itself is not a guarantee of greatness in the glass: in fact, many Barolo Cannubis are downright disappointing. For example, great wines are made in Cannubi Boschis (Luciano Sandrone made the site famous, but Francesco Rinaldi’s Cannubi is almost all Boschis, too), Cannubi San Lorenzo (for example, Ceretto’s outstanding version), Cannubi Valletta (Giacomo Fenocchio’s is more than just outstanding), and Cannubi Muscatel (where Cascina Bruciata makes a lovely wine). The perceived greatness of Cannubi proper is in the vineyard’s location, seeing as it was long believed to lie at the crossroads of where Barolo’s main two geologically different soils, the Tortonian and Serravallian, meet. Therefore, it was believed that the wines stemming from Cannubi combine the perfumed velvetiness of the grapes grown on soils from the Tortonian stage with the power and backbone of those born from grapes grown on soils of the Serravallian stage. It’s not so, of course: modern geologic studies have shown that the Cannubi vineyard sits on mainly Saint Agathe’s marls of the Tortonian stage. The one single factor that most characterizes Cannubi is its relatively high sand content (35 percent) compared to the rest of the area. (The average for the whole Barolo zone is 31 percent, but it is generally lower in soils of the Tortonian stage.

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