Barolo DOCG and the philosophy of the territory
Barolo is a wine with a denomination of controlled and guaranteed origin, which undoubtedly expresses the blazon of Piedmontese wines and beyond. Thanks to its noble origins and its bicentennial history, it has been able to conquer over time the role of “Wine of Kings and King of wines” and certainly represents one of the highest expressions of the Nebbiolo grape, which for many centuries has characterized excellence of Langhe viticulture.
We are a few kilometers south of the city of Alba, in the province of Cuneo, in a small area that fully includes the territory of the municipalities of Barolo, Castiglione Falletto and Serralunga d’Alba and partly that of Monforte d’Alba, La Morra , Verduno, Grinzane Cavour, Diano d’Alba, Cherasco, Roddi, and of course Novello.
The Barolo DOCG vineyards, which must be made up exclusively of the Nebbiolo vine, fall on hilly soils located at an altitude between 170 and 540 meters above sea level. They are characterized by sedimentary limestone rocks of marine origin (the Marne), variously infiltrated by clays and sands, and offer the optimal condition for Nebbiolo to “read” the territory and give the Barolo of each vineyard a unique personality.
And it is on this personality that the identification of each Additional Geographic Mention is played (Me.GA – the cru), which has always been at the center of the Le Strette philosophy, which brings into the bottle the Barolos obtained from three different crus: the Bergera-Pezzole and the Corini-Pallaretta in Novello, and the Bergeisa in Barolo. Tasting the Barolo of different crus together is equivalent to making a small trip to the Langa area, which offers a new emotion to every angle of view.
If then the characteristics are combined, as it was once done, and the Barolo is born from the blend of Nebbiolo grapes or Barolo wines from the various Me.GAs, here is that aromas and flavors are intertwined in an overall overview of the territory: thus happens in the Barolo Classico Le Strette DOCG.
Origins of Barolo DOCG
If, on the one hand, Nebbiolo has a millennial bond with the Langa lands, its vinification, from which Barolo as we know it today originates, dates back to the first half of the 1800s, when the foresight of some nobility Piedmontese seized its potential for the production of a wine of great structure and longevity, capable, thanks to the Marquise of Barolo, to gain fame and appreciation at the Savoy court and hence in the courts of all Europe.
It was thanks to the work of perfecting the vinification of Nebbiolo, carried out in the years around 1830 -1850 in the properties of the Marchesa Giulia Falletti Colbert in Barolo and Serralunga, in the cellars of the Castello di Verduno owned by King Carlo Alberto of Sardinia, and in the estates of Count Camillo Benso in Grinzane Cavour, that Barolo set out on the via del blazone. With the important technical contributions of the oenologists of the time, first of all by the General Enologist Francesco Staglieno, who in 1835 published the manual “Instruction on the best method of making and storing wines in Piedmont”, Nebbiolo began to be vinified as a dry wine : sweet wines, sparkling and not very long-lasting, leave room for rich and austere wines and the progressive affirmation of Barolo, ambassador of Piedmontese wines in the world elite.
