2021 Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba

The house Pio Cesare is one of the classic producers of the region. Based in Alba, the region's "wine capital", and founded in 1881 by Cesare Pio. Its name has been retained in reverse order as the name of this trading house and family business. It is still in family hands, as it is headed by Pio Boffa, the founder's great-grandson.

He continues the work of the family in an excellent way, and has since also been responsible for a number of modernisations and changes at this beautiful, traditional company. For example, Pio Cesare has always been a trading house, which purchased the grapes on contract from winegrowers in the region. This is also a common practice in this region, which has many small winegrowers with small patches of vineyard, who are always ready 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 winemaker.

Pio Boffa has decided that for the quality of the wines it is a good thing to also own vineyards. Over the years he has therefore acquired a number of vineyards, especially in the famous areas of Barolo and Barbaresco. The vineyard property now extends over 45 hectares, and produces some of the house's finest wines, topped by a few distinct vineyard cuvées. These are only marketed in the good years.

The necessary changes have also been made in winemaking. We have opted for a very restrained vinification, 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 maturation on 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.