2018 Pio Cesare Barbaresco

The Barbaresco is an ultimate Nebbiolo wine, that is to say a wine that has naturally acquired a lot of firmness through the use of the Nebbiolo grape, and therefore has to mature for a long time. However, the Nebbiolo is picked when it is perfectly ripe, usually around mid-October. The grapes come almost exclusively from the municipality of Treiso. The rest of the grapes come from vineyards in Barbaresco and San Rocco Seno dElvio. This produces a wine with more complexity, due to the different terroirs. Fermentation takes place with optimal contact between skins and fermenting wine, to give the wine color and character. The grapes ferment at about 25 degrees and they stay in contact with the fermenting wine for between three and four weeks. It then matures in barriques, partly new barrels of French oak, partly also new barrels of Slavonian oak. A deliberate choice has been made for a long wood aging, up to three years for part of the wine, to give it more complexity and to emphasize the beauty of the wine. And Pio Cesare more than succeeded in that.

The house of Pio Cesare is one of the classic producers of the region. Located in Alba, the wine capital of this region, and founded in 1881 by Cesare Pio. His name has been retained in reverse order as the name of this trading house and family business. It is still in family hands, because it is headed by Pio Boffa, the great-grandson of the founder. He continues the work of the family in an excellent way, and in the meantime he is also responsible for a number of modernizations and changes at this fine, traditional company. For example, Pio Cesare has always been a trading house, which contracted the grapes from wine growers in the region. This is also a common practice in this region, which has many small winegrowers with small plots of vineyard, who are always willing to sell their grapes to one of the trading houses. In that respect, the region is a bit like Burgundy, with all those different vineyards, each with its own name, divided into small pieces of vineyard, all of which are owned by a different winegrower.

Pio Boffa has decided that it is a good thing for the quality of the wines to own vineyards. Over the years, he has therefore purchased a number of vineyards, especially in the famous areas of Barolo and Barbaresco. The vineyard property is now 45 hectares in size, and produces some of the house's finest wines, with a few separate vineyard cuvées as the highlights. These are only marketed in the good years.

The necessary changes have also been made in winemaking. A very restrained vinification has been chosen, in which the wine is left alone as much as possible, so with as few interventions as possible. Each wine receives the individual treatment that best suits that particular wine, with a shorter or longer fermentation on the skins, whether or not followed by a classic aging in Slavonian oak, the traditional wood of the region. It produces wines with a classic finesse, balanced and complex, worthy representatives of this special wine region.

92/100 Parker and 95/100 Suckling