The world’s fine wine regions famously exist where the climate is just warm enough for grapes to reach ripeness. The ever-warming climate, however, has greatly increased this likelihood, with good-to-great vintages now convincingly outweighing the poorer ones.  Despite this, vintage variation remains an important factor in fine wine and when contrasting 2016, 2017 and 2018 in Piedmont, you see there are still strong variations in climate. The pitfalls of a vintage could arguably be even greater, in that these regions are no longer only concerned by wet, cooler conditions but also by the perils of excessive heat and drought. While hotter conditions can drastically affect yield and quality, the 2017 vintage in Piedmont seems to show that – despite these risks – vines are better at handling the heat. 
Following on from an almost perfect 2016 growing season in Piedmont, 2017 was always going to play second fiddle. The 2017 and 2018 vintages were certainly not as straightforward and – in fact – the two together offer completely contrasting growing seasons which produced totally different results, with 2017 hot and dry, 2018 cool and wet. Despite initial concerns regarding the heat in 2017, the wines – now in bottle – are surprisingly fresh, yet with richly concentrated fruit. Giuseppe Vaira sums it up best: “2017 is a vintage that defies logic.  It was the driest vintage on record and the earliest picking dates of the last five years. Yet, the wines are surprisingly vivid, fresh and still introverted: the opposite of what you would expect from a warm year.” For Giovanni Angeli at Massolino, the 2017s are similar to the 2015s, but with more “energy and freshness”, a pleasant surprise considering the year’s hot, dry conditions. Visiting Piedmont in early 2018, I remember how concerned winemakers were about the past summer. They were shocked by the extreme conditions, registering as the hottest and driest summer since 2003; yet, as Ferruccio Grimaldi and Giovanni Angeli noted, alcohol levels remained normal – particularly for the Nebbiolo.  Grimaldi believes this is because the vines shut down during the hottest period and stopped producing sugar. More surprising was that acidity remained high, something Grimaldi attributes to low levels of malic acid in the grapes. This might sound counter-intuitive, but it is the tartaric acid in grapes that provides freshness, while malic acidity in fact lessens the sense of freshness. For Grimaldi, low malic acidity signifies two things: the grapes reached an excellent degree of ripening, while also retaining healthy levels of tartaric acidity. Grimaldi also noted that, despite the heat in the day, the nights were cooler than other hot vintages – potentially another factor that helped preserve the acidity and freshness in the wines.  Emanuele Baldi from Prunotto pointed out that another possible saviour of the vintage – albeit to the detriment of the year’s yield – was frost. A mild winter prompted early budbreak, meaning vines were significantly advanced when the region was hit by frost. This led to huge losses particularly for the white varieties Moscato and Arneis, but also for lower-lying plots of Nebbiolo, where frost pockets formed.  The fruit that escaped was all from the higher vineyards, sites which naturally preserved more acidity thanks to their altitude. For Vajra, there were three key factors to 2017’s success: the diurnal temperature swing, the lack of rain (which caused a limited intake of potassium and thus better retention of acidity), and a gentle, fresh September which set the stage for Nebbiolo’s tannins to fully ripen. The biggest threat for the season was the lack of water, the risk being that without adequate water the grapes would become shrivelled and overripe. Massolino tried to counter the drought by not trimming the canopy (providing shade) and breaking off superficial roots, forcing the remaining roots to go deeper in search of water.  “We learned a big lesson from this vintage,” says Angeli. “The vines are much more flexible than we imagined.” Moreover, the season highlighted the region’s marl soils important role as a water regulator. “They are like a big sponge that’s able to catch the water during winter and spring, and release it slowly during the rest of the season avoiding stress to the vines,” explains Angeli. The region was blessed again with welcome rain in late August and September, allowing the vines to find equilibrium, completing the full cycle of vegetative growth while also the fruit to ripen fully (both in terms of sugar and phenolic ripeness). While Nebbiolo production was down by around 15 to 25% for some producers (due to the spring frosts and drought), the grapes that survived were beautifully ripe. The 2017 vintage will be remembered for its early harvest, but the results are excellent. “The 2017 Barolo are rich, fresh and fruity wines,” says Grimaldi, “and more ready to drink now compared to 2016 vintage.” Massolino’s Angeli agrees: “The wines already have soft, smooth tannins with a complex and sweet mid-palate.” For Baldi, the wines have fantastic concentration and, more importantly, they are not flabby.  They may not have the structural prowess of the 2016 and will not age as well, but Baldi believes they will drink beautifully over the next 10 to 15 years. Vaira notes the warmth of the year gave the wines “an extra layer of density and mid-palate richness… but what I love about these wines,” he says, “is the quality of the texture and almost a sappy freshness that keeps everything in balance.” Particularly from Vajra’s cooler sites, Giuseppe believes the top 2017s will have sensational ageing potential, especially in comparison to other similarly warm vintages. The 2017 vintage might have been challenging in terms of heat and drought, but such conditions are likely to be more prevalent in the years to come. The good news is that the vines seem to be adapting to these warmer vintages and vignerons are learning how to cope with them – producing some excellent wines that defy logic, remaining remarkably fresh and age-worthy. 
The vintage in brief: Hot and dry conditions – yet the wines have surprising freshness Yields reduced by frost and drought particularly in lower-lying sites Supple tannins that make the wines approachable already Ripe yet fresh wines that offer good medium-term drinking Browse all Barolo or read more Editorial 

With the release of the 2017 Barolos fast approaching, Gavin Smith spoke to some of the region’s leading producers – Giovanni Angeli from Massolino, Giuseppe Vaira from Vajra, Emanuele Baldi from Prunotto and Ferruccio Grimaldi – about the vintage, its extreme conditions and the surprising results

The Barolo 2017 vintage is beyond all expectations. We explore the year that defies logic and the wines are surprisingly vivid, fresh and introverted

Barolo 2017 vintage report 

Barolo 2017: vintage report

Inspiration often strikes at unexpected moments. For Salvino Benanti, owner of the eponymous winery, it was late at night in his office at a London investment bank, when he overheard his boss on a phone call, apologising to his wife for not being home. “I heard him say, ‘Imagine one day, if this all works out, we’ll retire and move to the Mediterranean.’” Salvino recalls this moment, which became a turning point in his life: “I suddenly thought, well I could do that tomorrow.”   Salvino’s late father was Dr Giuseppe Benanti, a former pharmaceutical company owner, who himself also once pivoted mid-career to return to his small Sicilian hometown to make wine and is today widely credited with launching a winemaking renaissance in Etna that has propelled the tiny region from relative anonymity to international recognition and acclaim.  Although wine has been produced across Sicily for centuries, the area around Mount Etna where the Benanti family is from had fallen into obscurity by the 19th century, with many poorly maintained or abandoned vineyards and virtually no commercial wine production. In the early 1980s, however, Giuseppe embarked upon a decade-long research project, where he methodically studied the soil types, local indigenous grapes and microclimates. In a very short time, he came to realise the potential of his birthplace. Giuseppe hired a local oenologist named Salvo Foti in 1988, and the two joined forces to make wine. He found in Foti an equal level of passion, drive and belief in the potential of Etna. Together they crafted the first release of Benanti wine from the Etna DOC in 1990, neither likely realising that they had sparked the resurgence of a neglected wine region.  
Shaped like a backwards crescent, the DOC of Etna is anchored of course by Mount Etna, an active stratovolcano that rises nearly 11,000 feet above sea-level. Mount Etna towers over the eastern side of Sicily, breaking the skyline in dramatic fashion and creating a wine region that is distinct not only within Sicily, but the wine world at large.  Generations of eruptions have altered the soil content, creating a patchwork of soil types around the peak. The high elevation provides respite from the hot climate of lower-lying Sicily, and the vineyards on the north side are protected from the hot Sirocco wind blowing from the south. Mount Etna remains one of the world’s most active volcanoes, with eruptions, ash clouds and lava flows nearly every year, albeit very slowly and in a predictable direction, away from villages and vineyards.   Only a few decades ago, the most well-known grape in Sicily was Nero d’Avola. Often made in an accessible, full-bodied and bold style, Nero d’Avola was easy to grow, and easy to love. Frequently blended with international varieties to add colour and weight, it quickly became an international hit. Many assume the southerly latitude relegates Sicily to only wines like Nero d’Avola – dark and dense. Mount Etna tosses this logic out the window, however.   The rocky, steep vineyards of Etna have always been planted mainly to three indigenous varieties: the red grapes Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio, and the white grape Carricante. Nerello Mascalese produces wines that are light in colour, with elevated tannins providing ample structure. The wines can be ethereal, and much like Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir, have a remarkable transparency that allows the specific location to imbue itself into the wine, with even neighbouring plots expressing themselves quite differently. With sour cherry and wild red plum notes, as well as faint tobacco, someone tasting Nerello Mascalese blind for the first time might be excused for thinking the wine was perhaps a gentler style of Nebbiolo, or alternatively a more grippy, savoury style of Pinot Noir. In many ways the variety captures the best of both. Yet, until recently, Nerello Mascalese was obscure. “It was considered to be a bulk wine. People didn’t know it that well, so we weren’t noticed at first,” Salvino explains.   Nerello Cappuccio, with its darker colour and softer tannins, has often been used as a blending partner for Nerello Mascalese, making it more approachable, though for many producers, it has fallen out of fashion as Nerello Mascalese ascends the ladder of critical opinion. Carricante, on the other hand, is a high-acid grape, with intense minerality and a slightly saline character. Described by Ian d’Agata as “potentially one of Italy’s greatest cultivars, white or red”, Carricante can thrive at high elevations and develops fascinating, almost Riesling-like petrol aromas with age.  While some viticultural generalities are true across the region – trace elements such as iron and phosphorous are uniformly high across the DOC, for example – the soils are surprisingly varied between contradas (a delineated local municipality of sorts, often borrowed by winemakers in Etna to signify which part of the DOC their wine hails from), of which there are 142. Even a change of a few hundred feet in elevation can mean a difference in depth of soil as well as soil structure.  Although to outsiders, living next door to an active volcano might seem to be a risky proposition, Salvino, like most Sicilians, doesn’t seem to be overly concerned.  The ash that often floats down from the volcano is not necessarily a bad thing, he explains, unlike the ash from wildfires. While ash from burnt wood and vegetation is highly acrid and easily taints wine with a bitter aftertaste, volcanic ash, on the other hand, is odourless and tasteless. When it falls in Etna, it hardens into flakes of pumice, Salvino explains, which crunch underfoot like breakfast cereal, but soon break down into a much finer, sandy texture, as it becomes part of the soil and terroir.  After 25 years at the helm of his winery, Giuseppe passed the torch to Salvino and his twin brother Antonio in 2012, giving them full ownership. The brothers, in many ways, led parallel lives. Born in Sicily, the two were educated abroad, and both worked as bankers in London. And, most fortunately, both were of a similar mindset when it came to the family winery. Having felt they had achieved enough in their careers, Salvino and Antonio came to a mutual decision to move back to Sicily – the lightbulb moment Salvino experienced in his office was a sentiment shared by his brother.   By the time they took over, Etna was fully on the radar of wine enthusiasts around the world, who were intrigued by the prospect of mineral-driven wines made on the side of an active volcano. The beginning was not easy, however, Salvino says, as their father was forced to step back and let his sons build their own path together. “We had a lot of confrontation and debate. My father was stubborn, and wouldn’t listen to anyone, but we had the final word. He became a loud advisor with no power,” Salvino laughingly remembers. They made tough decisions, including selling off a few vineyards and reducing the number of wines produced. “We were a bit ruthless,” he admits.  Today, the brothers act as co-general managers, overseeing the production of 250,000 bottles of wine per year, all made from the three indigenous varieties, coming from five distinct contradas in the DOC. Their white wines are made from 100% Carricante, vinified in stainless steel and never aged in oak, while the red wines are either mono-varietal, or comprised of Nerello Mascalese blended with a small amount of Nerello Cappuccio. They avoid new oak in the winery, choosing instead to age in neutral vessels where “the elegance expresses itself quite freely”, Salvino explains.  When people think of Sicily, they think of opulence, richness and power. “This is not correct,” Salvino emphasises. Though only 5% of Sicily’s wine production comes from Etna, the wines could not be more different than the rest of the island – and southern Italy for that matter. “We are about elegance, leanness, and cellar-worthiness,” he explains.  Salvino elaborates on the distinct shift in style since he and his brother assumed control. He explains that in the early days of the winery, more oak was employed and the wines were more forward. “In the 1980s, no one knew or cared about Etna, so I think my father was trying to capture the world’s attention, maybe trying to connect with Nero d’Avola drinkers.” When Salvino and Antonio took over, however, they were open-minded and “free from prejudice”: “We didn’t have a pre-formed view of anything,” he says. This allowed them to examine the wines with fresh eyes, and rather than try to emulate another region or variety’s style, they made the decision to allow the grapes and soil of Etna to speak for themselves. “We realised that what the world wanted from Etna was more pureness.” And this is something they continue to strive for. “We would like more purity, more elegance, more finesse, always,” Salvino emphasises.    In less than 40 years, the spark that Giueseppe Benanti provided ignited a revolution, one that his sons – along with a host of other winegrowers and winemakers on the island – carry on today.  Salvino feels that there is now a clear Etna identity, supported by many up-and-coming younger producers. From only a few decades ago, when his father was introducing the wines of Etna to the world, there are now over 440 producers within the Etna DOC. The appellation, however, remains a niche even within Italy, producing only 5.8 million bottles per year, making it smaller than Barolo.   And this next generation of winemakers continues to push forward. The producers in Etna recently voted unanimously to apply for DOCG status, a process which can take up to 24 months to get approval, though it seems inevitable given their region’s sharp upward trajectory. Some rules will become more stringent, such as lower mandated yields and longer ageing requirements – as Salvino puts it, “We will be forced to go down a more difficult route” – but ultimately this will only help to continue to uplift the quality of the wines and their reputation. 

The delicate, smoky and saline wines of Etna have rapidly become some of Italy’s most famous – but the region’s renaissance is recent. Rachael Ryan – Senior Buyer at Vinfolio, our US arm – sat down with Salvino Benanti, whose father was one of Etna’s pioneers

Etna’s wines have rapidly become some of Italy’s most famous – but the region’s renaissance is recent. We sat down with Benanti, one of Etna’s vinous pioneers

Establishing Etna – Benanti’s pioneering wines

Establishing Etna: Benanti

2001 Chambolle-Musigny, Premier Cru, Les Amoureuses, Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier (and lashings of Beaujolais) – chosen by Daniel Johnnes, Wine Director of The Dinex Group and Founder of La Paulée, La Fête du Champagne, La Tablée and Pressoir  “This holiday I plan on opening several bottles of great wine. Great doesn't necessarily mean expensive or rare. I'll be sure to drink plenty of Beaujolais and mostly from my favorite producers, Morgon from Marcel Lapierre, Fleurie from Jean-Louis Dutraive and Chiroubles from Domaine Thillardon. As much as they are "drink everyday" wines, they also have the magic power of putting a smile on everyone's face.  “Yet, for that really special wine, I plan on opening a bottle of Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Les Amoureuses 2001 from Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier. Chambolle-Musigny is among my favorite villages in Burgundy and the Amoureuses vineyard could easily make a case to be classified as Grand Cru. It combines the perfume, texture, elegance and persistence typical of the very best red Burgundy. The style of Domaine Mugnier is one of refinement and grace. And with 20-plus years’ age, it should be perfect for drinking now. Even though it will accompany a roast chicken, this wine is like a celebration and a meal in and of itself.”  2018 Klein Constantia Vin de Constance – chosen by Jeffrey Koren, Head of Wine at Marceline, London  “While it’s easy to open a perfunctory bottle of Port or Sauternes at the end of a Christmas meal, the oh-so-delicious Vin de Constance by Klein Constantia has become my go-to sweet wine for the festive period over the past few years. Steeped in history, Vin de Constance was famously a favourite of Napoleon and lauded by authors like Jane Austen and Baudelaire. These days, winemaker Matt Day has revived this legendary dessert wine to its former acclaim. It always offers wonderful notes of apricot, honey and spice. But most importantly, it’s balanced by refreshing acidity that is an absolute necessity after an indulgent holiday meal.”  Hauller Frères Pinot Gris La Chappelle Signature – chosen by Joséphine Duffau-Lagarrosse, Ch. Beauséjour   “Ludovic Hauller is a long-standing friend I met during my studies in Burgundy. I appreciate the precision that his family channels into the wines, and this cuvée showcases great finesse, with freshness and elegance, mirroring the granite terroir in which the vines grow. It’s a Pinot Gris of remarkable complexity, hailing from a plot that sits below the Chapelle Saint-Sébastien de Dambach-la-Ville. Ludovic introduced me to Alsatian wines, which I knew little of previously, and I love this cuvée. As for when, this is definitely the kind of bottle I would open in the days following Christmas, with my family, playing board games by the fire and putting the world to rights, patiently waiting for the New Year!”  2002 Champagne Salon, Giuseppe Mascarello’s 2017 Barolo Villero, Tiberio’s 2018 Colle Vota – chosen by Lorenza Sebasti, Castello di Ama  “As usual, this Christmas we will open a magnum of 2002 Champagne Salon. I remember we had the chance to buy a few magnums a long time ago as they were precisely the birth years of our children (1997, 1999 and 2002). Then I guess I will spoil everyone at home with a beautiful Barolo Giuseppe Mascarello Villero 2017 and Colle Vota Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2018 from my dear friend Cristiana Tiberio. She makes very few bottles of this very elegant and vibrant wine, which is among my favourite reds.”  2021 La Morandina Moscato d’Asti – chosen by Donald Edwards, Head Sommelier at La Trompette, London  “Beyond the best white Burgundy I can lay my grubby mits on, I’ll be cracking the second bottle on a case of La Morandina’s 2021 Moscato d’Asti – part of a new festive tradition. Back when my wine appreciation was still protean, I heard a rumour that Moscato d’Asti – the sweet fizzy floral stuff that we sold in my Glasgow Oddbins – ages magnificently. Twenty or so years later, I’m the Head Sommelier at La Trompette, hosting a big Piedmont-themed wine lunch. Barolos and Barbarescos aplenty litter the room, but the wine that stops me in my tracks? A 2013 Moscato d’Asti from Giuseppe Vajra. It was phenomenal, still gleefully tasty, but now with a touch of extra weight, more waxy lime skin and late-evening summer flowers, heady in its bouquet. Here she was, my white whale, and, boy, she didn’t disappoint.  “Last December, visiting La Morandina in Asti, I asked whether they had anything with a bit of age and lo! a 15-year-old magnum appeared. My stars had aligned for a second time – the wine equally lovely, offering a bit more exotic spice, cardamom and coriander seed along with the sweet creamy lime zest. Crucially, this time I could see the germ of a plan. Each year, I would buy a cast of Moscato d’Asti, building a reserve of Moscato to steadily enjoy over the coming years. I’ll be the Christmas king of deliciously sweet floral fizz. So, on the morning of 25th, I’ll be twisting the top off the second bottle from last year’s case and smugly enjoying my Moscato and crumpet as I let my mind wander over the riches I’m preparing for the coming years.”  François Cotat Sancerre Le Mont Damné and Massican Gemina – chosen by Alex Sarovich, Founder and CEO of Own Rooted Hospitality  "As the oldest of five in a large Italian family, I've learned that selecting the perfect wine is an art form that requires careful consideration of both the food and the audience. When I'm hanging out with my twin 24-year-old brothers, they're all about vibrant, crisp wines like Champagne or Sancerre. If I can get my hands on it, I love surprising them with a bottle of Cotat’s Le Mont Damné, a truly exceptional wine that never fails to impress.  “In contrast, when I'm with my mom and aunt, we lean into our Italian roots. White wines from Italy are a staple in our household, especially when we're in the kitchen, cooking and preparing a meal together. This year, I'm planning to bring a bottle of Massican Gemina to our holiday gathering in McMinnville. This beautiful white blend, composed of Greco, Falanghina, and Fiano grapes from top California vineyards, perfectly captures the essence of our family's wine appreciation – a nod to our Italian heritage with a California twist.”  Coche-Dury Meursault, Domaine de Trévallon and Jean-Michel Gérin Côte-Rôtie La Landonne – chosen by Philippe Abadie of Alvina Pernot  “First of all, we decided to open a bottle of 2022 Meursault from Domaine Coche-Dury, given to us by a client to celebrate the birth of our son Pâris, who was born on January 1st 2022. We also really like the new style introduced by Raphaël since he took over this magnificent estate. Then Trévallon: my grandfather Georges from the south of France was an unconditional fan of the estate, and during my childhood there was always a bottle on festive tables (for birthdays, Christmas, New Year, etc) – so this will be a little wink to him. Then last, a bottle of Côte-Rôtie La Landonne by Jean-Michel Gérin. The story goes back to a few weeks after I first met Alvina, for this is the bottle of red we drank on our first restaurant date.”  2022 Domaine Yui A Rouge – chosen by Carlito Chiu, Wine Director at Andō, Hong Kong  “Established in 2019 by the dynamic husband-and-wife duo Tetsuya and Aya Sugiyama, Domaine Yui is a Japanese winery with a profound mission of unity and togetherness. Inspired by the meaning of the Japanese word “yui”, “to connect/link”, the Sugiyamas are dedicated to bringing people together through their shared love for wine and agriculture. Their A Rouge is a remarkable expression of Burgundy-style red wine crafted in Hokkaido, Japan – a specific blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris that showcases the region’s terroir. It is particularly special to me because it embodies the innovative spirit of Japanese winemaking, while honouring traditional techniques. For me, this wine represents the potential of Japanese terroir and the dedication of winemakers committed to producing world-class wines, making it a wonderful choice for celebrating the joy and warmth of the Christmas season.”  Read more Editorial

As friends and family gather together over Christmas, it’s the perfect time to pull the cork on something special. Here, some of the wine world’s biggest names – with leading sommeliers and top winemakers – to tell us what they’re cracking open this year, and why

Insight on what the wine world’s most famous names – sommeliers and star winemakers – are drinking over Christmas, from Salon Champagne to Vin de Constance 

What the wine world is drinking this Christmas

What those in the industry are drinking this Christmas

Barolo remains the most important region in the world for Nebbiolo. This variety is one of the world’s most sensitive and difficult to grow, rarely found outside Piedmont. While there are a handful of other high-quality enclaves across Piedmont including Valmaggiore (24km north of Barolo) and the cooler sites of Gattinara and Ghemme – collectively known as Alto Piedmont (or Alto Piemonte), nowhere else matches Barolo and neighbouring Barbaresco for complexity and ageing potential.  The wines are typically pale ruby in colour with grippy tannins, high acidity and a flavour profile of red cherry, mulberry, camphor and rose petal. The grape’s almost transparent character (similar to Pinot Noir) makes it a great transmitter of terroir – producing many nuanced styles, flavours and aromas – from the most delicate and floral to the most structured and mineral, and everywhere in between. It is this complex variety within such a small region that makes the grape, and the varying communes of Barolo, so interesting. Barolo has a cooler microclimate compared to nearby Barbaresco, resulting in a longer ripening season. While this means it is more sensitive to vintage variation, in the best years the wines reach highs unmatched anywhere else. Dry Barolo has been produced in the region since the mid-1800s. A wine that was a favourite amongst the aristocratic families of the Savoy dynasty, it is thought to have been first produced in this style by King Carlo Alberto’s estate in nearby Pollenzo. The aristocracy bankrolled wine production in Barolo, helping the pioneering winemakers at the time – such as Staglieno and the French oenologist Oudart – improve the quality and reputation of the wines. Their aristocratic link earned Barolo the nickname “the king of wines and the wine of kings”. Understanding the variety of styles of Barolo to a large extent depends upon where the grapes are grown. The landscape of Barolo is made up of many small undulating hillsides where exposition, topography and altitude all play important roles in the final character of a wine made in a specific part of the region or vineyard. Historically the sub-regions were not so important, largely due to the fact that Barolo wines existed exclusively as blends of fruit from across the region (often including grapes from the vineyards of Barbaresco). The 1961 vintage, however, represents a significant turning point when both Prunotto and Vietti released single-vineyard Barolos from Barolo Bussia and Rocche di Castiglione. While it was common knowledge amongst the local grape brokers which parts of the valley produced the best Nebbiolo, it wasn’t until the 1970s when these place names first came to print in Luigi Veronelli’s map. At the most basic level Barolo is divided into two valleys: the Central Valley and the Serralunga Valley. The Central Valley – including sub-regions of La Morra, Barolo and Novello – produce a more approachable style, noted for their fragrance and elegance, thought to be due to the distinct blue-grey marl content in the Tortonian soils found in these vineyards. The Serralunga Valley – with its sub-regions of Serralunga d’Alba and Monforte d’Alba – tend to create more powerful, tannic, concentrated wines due to the higher content of clay, limestone and sandstone found in the Serravalian soils. In Castiglione Falletto there is a richer concentration of sandstone and this is generally thought to produce a middle ground between the more structured character of the Serravalian soils and the elegance brought about by the Tortonian soils.  While these variations in soil throughout the sub-regions play some part in the differences in the structure and flavour profile of different Barolos, this is just one factor and should be understood as broad generalisations. The complex terroirs are defined not just by the soils, but by the varying expositions, altitudes, viticutural techniques, clones, pruning and winemaking methods which vary from estate to estate – making it impossible to provide a completely definitive profile of each area.    
A guide to Barolo's communes  There are 11 village communes within the Barolo DOCG: La Morra, Barolo, Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga d’Alba, Cherasco, Diano d’Alba, Grinzane Cavour, Monforte d’Alba, Novello, Roddi and Verduno. Below you’ll find a guide to the distinctive style of the main communes, as well as the best growers from each.  La Morra Wines from La Morra can be some of the most perfumed Barolo, typically with soft, smooth tannins. It is believed that the fine sandy soil of the region is behind the wines’ elegance. As the largest Barolo subregion, however, La Morra is the most diverse both in style and quality. Typically, these wines can be much more approachable in youth and tend to fair better in cooler vintages. Top producers in the region include Roberto Voerzio – who makes a unique style for the region, with strict pruning leading to miniscule yields and austere, tannic wines with long ageing potential. Poderi Oddero is more typical for the commune, producing bright, fruity Barolos with distinctly elegant tannins. Elio Altare is known for more modern-style Barolos which are matured both in traditional large barrels, as well as smaller barriques, and some new oak for their single-vineyard wines. Top vineyards: Brunate, Cerequio, Rocche dell’Annunziata Barolo Similar to La Morra, the Barolo sub-region produces broad, open, velvety Barolo but often with a bit more structure and concentration than those from La Morra. The region is home to some of the most historic sites, including Cannubi – a Cru that was singled out as an exceptional site even before the creation of the Barolo appellation (with the earliest bottled example of this site dating back to 1752). It is also home to some of the most respected producers in the region, who make markedly different styles of Barolo – further confirming that location is only part of the puzzle. Fierce traditionalists Bartolo Mascarello famously don’t make single-vineyard wines but their blended Barolo remains one of the region’s finest. Guiseppe Rinaldi’s winery is also staunchly traditional in their winemaking, seeing cross-commune blends as the ultimate expression of Barolo. winery is also staunchly traditional both in their winemaking, and blending of vineyards, seeing cross-commune blends as the ultimate expression of Barolo. Luciano Sandrone is more modern in style, the wines made in an elegant style that is more approachable in youth but also offers fantastic ageing potential – making them some of the region’s most collectable. Top vineyards: Cannubi, Ravera, Bricco delle Viole Castiglione Falletto  Although situated in the Serralunga valley, Castiglione Falletto falls somewhere in the middle between the elegant and fragrant qualities of La Morra and Barolo, and the boldness and concentration of Serralunga and Monforte. This is due to the aspect of the best slopes here, where the vines have maximum exposure to the sun, meaning riper fruit and added concentration. Giuseppe Mascarello produces one of Barolo’s most famous single-vineyard wines from the Monprivato Cru. Traditional in style, the wine is fermented in tank and aged in large oak. Vietti – a true pioneer of single-Cru Barolos – is also based here, as it has been since the 1800s. This estate has not only some of the best label designs in the world, but access to some of the finest Crus in Barolo, including Ravera, Rocche di Castiglione and Brunate. Top vineyards: Rocche di Castiglione, Fiasco, Villero Serralunga d’Alba  Serralunga is defined by its high concentration of Sant’Agata soils. Growers here talk about the vines feeling pain, as the harder soils put more stress on the vine, producing wines of great depth and power – as well as some of the highest tannin levels and the most full-bodied Barolos of any region. The wines can often have a distinctive bitter orange aroma. The wines are solid and typically austere, but can also be incredibly elegant and expressive, some of the most terroir-driven and long-lasting Barolo. By far the most famous and revered wine from Serralunga is Giacomo Conterno’s Monfortino. Monfortino was in fact the first ever producer-named Barolo made in the Riserva style, with the first vintage made in the 1920s (today it comes from the Cascina Francia Cru). Although based in Barbaresco, Bruno Giacosa produces two of Barolo’s most revered wines from the Serralunga Cru of Falletto, released only in top vintages. These are two of the most consistent expressions of top single-vineyard Nebbiolo in Barolo. Top vineyards: Cascina Francia, Falletto, Ornato Monforte d’Alba Defined by concentration and structure, the soils in Monforte d’Alba contain more clay than limestone – the opposite of Serralunga. The resulting wines tend to have more volume on the palate and boldness, making them the most concentrated Barolos. The wines exhibit classic rose petal, clay pot, clove, camphor and cardamom aromas, and particularly bold tannins. Look out for bottlings from Elio Grasso whose Case Matè Barolo comes from Ginestra. Bussia is one of the most famous, but also largest Crus, producing many different styles. The best part of the vineyard is Upper Bussia; a natural amphitheatre with varying expositions, when combined it produces wines of fantastic complexity. For the ultimate insight into the vineyard, try the wines of Aldo Conterno – who makes five separate bottlings all from the Bussia Cru. Top vineyards: Bussia, Ginestra, Mosconi Browse all Barolo or read more Editorial 

Age-worthy yet terroir transparent, Barolo is a fascinating region. Its complex, varied terroir often draws comparisons with Burgundy. Here we delve into “the king of wines and wine of kings” – from its aristocratic beginnings to the villages, vineyards and producers to look out for.


Your guide to “the king of wines and wine of kings” – Barolo: from its aristocratic beginnings to the villages, vineyards and producers to look out for.

Your definitive guide to Barolo 

I am too disorganised to call myself a collector, but I often find myself thinking about the multiple meanings of collecting. I have a room full of books left unread from one year to the next, whose mute reproach I feel every time I am in their presence. I have half a dozen radios, from Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper’s folding Brionvega TS502 to a Danish-made Beolit 707 from Bang & Olufsen, with its slide rule tuning device. I have a manual typewriter.  Most of us accumulate such random clutter. These were never possessions that were primarily about being useful – the Brionvega and the Beolit have long since been supplanted by a bluetooth speaker and a smartphone. They represent my membership of the design tribe.  The books carry other layers of meaning. My five years at university are on one shelf. The traces of the eight years I have spent writing a just-completed biography of Boris Iofan – Josef Stalin’s preferred architect – are spelled out in the titles of the books on another shelf. The typewriter was inherited from my father and it serves to remind me of childhood. The closest that I come to having a collection that a serious collector might acknowledge is in my chairs: a Rover chair that Ron Arad salvaged from a car, a Gio Ponti Superlegera, an Eames Lounger, a Harry Bertoia, George Sowden’s Palace chair from the 1983 Memphis collection and a deconstructed armchair designed by Rei Kawakubo. On a larger or smaller scale, humans develop complex relationships with their possessions that can go from the professionalism of full-blown collecting, to the casual significance of a row of junk shop finds on a mantlepiece. They can tell us a lot about ourselves. Marina Warner’s guide to the house in Hampstead, now run as a museum, in which Sigmund Freud spent the last year of his life, offers an arresting insight into the significance that collecting had for him. She describes the ranks of ancient bronze, ceramic and marble figures parading across the desk that Freud brought with him to London from Vienna where he no longer felt safe due to Nazi occupation in 1938. Certainly, they are beautiful, and mostly they are precious. Thanks to their association with Freud, even the few that have been established as 20th-century forgeries will have become valuable. Some are almost 4,000 years old and reflect the religious and political practices of the distant past. Others, such as Freud’s art deco cigar case, come less freighted with history. But as Warner says, “they were also tools of thought, the kitchen utensils of his imagination”.   The batterie de cuisine of psychoanalysis included Egyptian coffin masks from the Roman period, Chinese jade and gold brooches, Roman glass, a 2,500-year-old sphinx, sarcophagus lids, Babylonian cylinder seals and Egyptian heart scarabs, as well as a 19th-century neck rest from New Guinea, modern metal porcupines, and Balinese figures. The pieces in pride of place on his desk, placed in apparently random order, were his special favourites, a tiny fraction of his collection that had become permanent fixtures. From time to time, Freud made space for a few new acquisitions to get a look in. “A collection to which there are no new additions is really dead,” he told his biographer Ernest Jones. After a short interval, most of the new things would be moved into the glass-fronted cabinets positioned around his study, where they were placed in more organised groups than those standing on his desk. Greek sculptures went on a shelf together. A cluster of representations of the Egyptian god Horus were grouped on another.  In Freud’s lifetime, the collection was continually changing. Before his move to London, he toured Vienna’s antiquities dealers almost every week on the look-out for new finds. He was ready to exchange pieces for items he could not afford to buy, and was generous in gifting pieces to friends and pupils he thought would appreciate them. Freud also had no qualms about buying items that came on the market in questionable circumstances, in particular, from the unofficial excavations (sometime after 1906) at a Roman fort in Hungary.   Despite the important part it played in his life, Freud wrote very little about collecting. The nearest that he came to spelling out what drove his interest in fragments of ancient sculpture, was when he compared his own exploration of the unconscious minds of his patients to an archaeological excavation of an ancient city. “The psychoanalyst, like the archaeologist, must uncover layer after layer of the patient’s psyche before coming to the deepest, most valuable treasures.”  Freud was known to share his dining table with choice specimens to act as companions during a meal. “I must always have an object to love”, he confessed to his colleague and rival Carl Jung. When he was writing his book The Interpretation of Dreams in 1895, Freud spent the summer at Schloss Bellevue outside Vienna. He took a selection of what he called “my old grubby gods who take part in the works as paperweights for the manuscripts” with him.  Before Freud left Austria for England in 1938, his desk, his consulting room, and his study at Berggasse 19 were photographed by Edmund Engelman. Engelman’s 150 images helped Freud’s architect son Ernst to transpose the desk and its contents from a dark back room in a Viennese apartment to a sunlit Hampstead villa.  Like most collectors, Freud could never limit himself to a single field. Ronald Lauder the former MoMA chairman, for example, is known for the collection of Viennese modernism that forms the basis for his own museum, the Neue Galerie in New York. He also collects (in depth) in 15 other fields with little apparent connection between them. Lauder is fascinated by the work of the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata. He has a collection of arms and armour going back to The Crusades, and another of World War Two memorabilia. He owns some of Egon Schiele’s finest works, as well as various 18th-century French artworks. Fellow collector Rolf Fehlbaum (head of Vitra) has one of the largest collections of modern chairs in the world, and gave Frank Gehry his first European commission to design a gallery for it, but he is equally fascinated by toy robots manufactured in Japan since 1937. He calls them tiny kinetic sculptures. Where possible, he acquires their original packaging too. Perhaps the best way to understand the psychology of collecting is to see it as a spectrum. At one end, it is about order and control. In a messy and uncontrollable universe, a collection offers at least a semblance of certainty. A collection of this kind is based on provenance, completeness and authenticity. An over-restored vintage Bugatti is less desirable to a collector than one in original condition.  Every previous owner, every detail of its making forms part of its record. A red Olivetti typewriter designed by Ettore Sottsass that once belonged to David Bowie was sold at Sotheby’s for US$65,000. You can buy one (that hasn’t been owned by Bowie) for US$750, which is still a lot of money for a piece of obsolete technology. Some collectors attempt to make patterns from the things that they acquire or, like jigsaw puzzlers, set out to complete a picture by locating every piece of a set. Some try to document the evolution of a species whether the subject of their interest is biscuit tins or the eggs of a particular type of bird. Some forms of collecting require the active engagement of the collector. Wildflowers need to be picked and dried quickly before they are pressed into a book. Butterfly collectors used macabre methods such as poison jars, or squeezing the thorax, to dispatch their prey without causing so much distress that they risk damaging delicate wings. At the other end of the spectrum, the accumulation of stuff by people who die alone in homes overwhelmed by stacks of ancient newspapers and tins of cat food, is a kind of sickness. It’s a condition that can overwhelm even the most celebrated of artists. In the last 17 years of his life, Andy Warhol filled a succession of cardboard boxes with a seemingly random accumulation of objects: taxi receipts, a vinyl Ramones single signed by Joey Ramone, a piece of an ancient, mummified foot, pastel-coloured corsets and a selection of metal dentures. Every time he had a full box, it was sealed and shipped off to storage in a warehouse in New Jersey. A typical box has 400 objects in it, some have as many as 1,200. Items in them include a piece of Caroline Kennedy’s wedding cake – Warhol seems to have been a regular guest at Kennedy weddings. He showed up 20 minutes after the wedding ceremony for Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger had started, in the company of Grace Jones. He was in black leather, and wearing two wigs; she had on a huge green fur hat.   Warhol’s boxes are a collection of the uncollectable and the uncontrollable, which, thanks to the resources of the Andy Warhol Foundation, has been tamed after six years of work by a dedicated group of archivists and cataloguers. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has aestheticised the cardboard boxes. They sit on back-lit shelves in the museum to suggest that this is not a random collection of trash that Warhol never looked at, but, in the view of the museum, is in fact a time-based art piece, comprising at least 500,000 objects that took 30 years to complete. It presents a considerably less impressive sight than British Regency period architect Sir John Soane’s museum. The architect of the Bank of England put as much effort into adapting his Lincoln’s Inn Fields house (and subsequently the two adjoining houses) to display his Hogarth paintings, a sarcophagus and his architectural models, as he did to accumulating the collection itself. The Nobel prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s novel, The Museum of Innocence is an eloquent exploration of the hoarding end of the collecting spectrum. What initially appears to be an account of a doomed love affair, quickly reveals itself as an exploration of the meaning of collecting. The story’s main protagonist Kemal starts acquiring things when his relationship with his lover Füsun is going well. When she drops an earring, he finds it and puts it to one side. As Füsun falls out of love with him, Kemal begins an increasingly desperate accumulation of objects that record their relationship. He picks up each of the cigarettes that she smokes. When she has stopped seeing him altogether, Kemal starts hanging around at her parents’ house and stealing pieces of cutlery that she might have used.  What makes Pamuk’s book particularly remarkable is that he acquired a house in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district that had belonged to a Greek merchant in the Ottoman era, and transformed it into a physical Museum of Innocence. It is, of course, very far from innocent; everything inside it is a lovingly created fiction. The first thing that you see once you get inside, is a wall covered with 4,213 cigarette ends, each of them carefully annotated in Pamuk’s neat handwriting, with imaginary details of the time and place they were smoked. The rest of the house is full of equally carefully fabricated objects from cosmetics to movie posters that reflect Pamuk’s vision of the modernising Turkey of the 1970s. “I think getting attached to objects happens in traumatic times and love is a trauma,” Pamuk once said. “Perhaps when they are in trouble, people hoard things.”  When Pamuk gave me a tour of his museum, he told me about meeting Warhol’s archivist, and expressed his reservations about the significance of the boxes in Pittsburgh. “Hoarding objects reaches the level of collecting only when there is a story that unites them,” he said. But that is a novelist criticising another, less narrative art form. While Freud’s desk in Hampstead was always useable, if overcrowded, the desk in fashion designer Paul Smith’s office in Covent Garden is completely overwhelmed with a snowdrift of collected objects that sweeps over an office chair, down onto the floor, and back up to the shelves that line every wall. There are stacks of books and magazines, cameras and mountains of vintage cycling jerseys. There is an i-Mac computer, a gift from Jony Ive that Smith has never used. Computers aren’t Smith’s thing. In any case, it’s too late now, short of purging half the contents of the room: there is no way to get near it. There are toy tin cars, collections of bottles from Moroccan markets, a pink bicycle and a lot of rabbits. “I once said in an interview that seeing a rabbit brings me luck, and they haven’t stopped pouring in ever since,” explains Smith. Collecting began, as did so many things in Smith’s career, with his early enthusiasm for cycling. Growing up in Nottingham in the 1950s, there was a newsagent which occasionally had a copy of L’Equipe, which would portray the heroes of the Tour de France in their yellow jerseys in colour on the cover, but in sepia inside. He bought the magazine, fascinated by the images, even if he couldn’t read it. “I can remember once saying, ‘I really like Jacques Anquetil’ to my father, which baffled him, since none of our family had ever been abroad. I saved my pocket money so that I could upgrade the gears on my bike from Simplex to Campagnolo. The box it came in was as important to me as the gear itself.”  What attracted Smith to the Campagnolo box, along with stamps and matchboxes which he has in large numbers – not just in his office but at his Nottingham HQ where he has an archivist trying to make sense of it all – is the way that designers can say so much in such a tiny space. He showed me a Japanese book of matches produced for a Tokyo nightclub in the 1970s. “It so clearly says it’s ‘contemporary’. You can hear the jazz already.”  Despite the huge assortment of assembled objects, Smith is reluctant to describe himself as a collector. “I just have a large quantity of the same things,” he says, matter of factly. “In my head, a collector is someone who selects an item or a subject. They collect them because they know a lot about them. Maybe I have a little knowledge about cycling jerseys.  In the early 1980s, on my first trips to Japan and India, I just got a bit carried away. I bought lots of Japanese furniture. In India, for some reason, I bought 15 wardrobes, and a piece of furniture that doubled as a staircase with drawers.” Smith had them all sent home on the Trans-Siberian Express.  He suggests that his is a collection that has found him. “Things collect me,” he says. “For some reason I started to be sent things, and they still keep coming.” There is an individual who regularly sends Smith artefacts that come unwrapped but covered in postage stamps. Others send him letters, toys, books and even ancient packets of razor blades. One visitor took careful photographs of his office, and later sent him a precisely detailed model of his office, complete with its chaotic contents. Smith’s London home, where he lives with his wife Pauline, is much calmer. “The house is hers. I do have one room for my stuff, but it’s mostly at the office that I get to look at things.” In 1996, patron of the arts and barrister Jill Ritblat gave the V&A Museum the largest single donation of clothes in its history, more than 1,000 items. There are ski outfits in postmodern pastel shades from the 1980s, and challenging Japanese experiments from Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake, as well as couture from Dior and Saint Laurent. There is work by Alexander McQueen, Biba, Mary Quant, and Christian Lacroix, Emanuel Ungaro and Victor Edelstein, and an evening outfit produced by a dressmaker based on an idea of Ritblat’s own design.  The early days of British fashion from the 1960s are represented by Foale and Tuffin, and Zandra Rhodes, and from the 1980s by Margaret Howell and Katharine Hamnett. There is tailoring from Tommy Nutter and work by Giorgio Armani. It is by no means a complete account of contemporary fashion, but it is certainly extensive, and like the personal wardrobe that it is, combines some very special pieces made for family occasions, with more everyday wear. The connecting thread of Ritblat’s collection is Ritblat herself. These were all pieces that she had bought to wear. They were not chosen like stamps, or old masters, or celadon vases to make a self-conscious collection, but were the result of a continuing sequence of choices over time. Taken together they are a reflection of her life as an English woman of a certain background, at a particular time in the country’s history. “I never saw it as a collection, it was more like my diary, though I have never had time to write a diary. Each piece brings back memories of when I wore it,” says Ritblat. She made her first donation to the V&A at the end of 1996, but kept back the things that she wanted to be able to go on using, and they formed the core of a donation to the Design Museum of another 400 items in 2013. Ritblat is ambivalent about fashion. As a child she was somewhat self-conscious about being dressed by her mother, who had studied fashion herself. She was relieved to be able to assume the camouflage of the complex uniform rituals of an English public school for girls in the 1950s. “I loved my school uniform at Roedean; we were expected to change our clothes four times a day, as chic as anything. Scratchy afternoon dresses, regulation school loafers, very nice blazers and pleated skirts.” As a student barrister, she found herself adopting the formal uniform of the legal profession, but then as a married woman began to build a wardrobe that reflected the life that she was leading. Later, when she was making her own choices, she was early to discover Miuccia Prada. “What you pick out is based on whether it suits you and on the zeitgeist,” she explains. Smith, Heseltine and Ritblat represent three very different approaches to collecting. For Smith, the unruly mountain of things in his office, is, like the collection on Sigmund Freud’s desk, part of the tools of his imagination, a source of imagery and ideas for his work as a designer. It’s also a means of establishing his personality. Heseltine’s garden is an investment of time, resources and creativity in the remaking of a place that speaks to the future using living organisms that will outlive us all. Ritblat’s clothes are a record of the full life of an individual. All of these collections provide insights into unique people, their lives and times. In their different ways all three reflect on the nature of collecting, and its ability to be a creative activity in itself. In a world in which technology threatens to abolish the material world altogether, objects have not lost their allure. Their physical condition marks the passing of time in ways that pixels and code cannot do. Collecting is the means all of us have to create histories of our times, and even more, of ourselves. This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue Two. 

In order to explore the mindset of the collector, Deyan Sudjic shines a light on the collected objects of Sigmund Freud and Andy Warhol, and speaks to three British collectors to better understand what it is that makes collecting such a vital part of the human experience.

Exploring the mindset of the collector and why the act is a vital part of the human experience, with a focus on Sigmund Freud and Andy Warhol

FONDATA: Exploring the art of collecting 

 I Collect, Therefore I Am

Sono seduto di fronte a Rino Fontana, un collezionista di vini italiano che Antonio Galloni ha nominato Personalità del Vino dell’Anno nel 2023. Fontana ha un aspetto dimesso – come qualsiasi altro settantenne che potresti trovare, sigaretta in mano, mentre sorseggia un espresso in una piazza soleggiata. Gli occhiali da sole pendono da un cordino intorno al collo e, di tanto in tanto, fruga tra foglietti di carta che sembrano fungere da calendario e/o diario. Non so bene cosa mi aspettassi, ma forse qualcuno un po’ più, beh, sofisticato. 
 Fontana colleziona vini dagli anni ’80 ed è rinomato per la sua cantina, un vero tesoro di annate straordinarie dei migliori produttori piemontesi. Galloni lo ha persino soprannominato “Il Professore” per la sua profonda conoscenza del vino italiano – nonostante non abbia mai lavorato nel settore. Mentre Fontana scorre le foto sul telefono, ricordando cene recenti, snocciola nomi e annate che lascerebbero senza parole qualsiasi amante del vino. 
 È cresciuto nell’Oltrepò Pavese, dove il padre era scalpellino, ma comprava uva e faceva un po’ di vino per la famiglia. Fontana fu mandato a scuola a Valenza, una città nota per l’industria dell’oro – e iniziò a lavorare in una fabbrica orafa verso la fine dell’adolescenza. A 24 anni, lui e il suo migliore amico aprirono il proprio laboratorio di gioielleria. Fu il proprietario di un ristorante locale a Mortara a introdurlo ai veri piaceri del vino, e una bottiglia di Monfortino di Conterno lo fece innamorare perdutamente del Nebbiolo – l’annata 1958, per la precisione. Da quel primo assaggio, ha stappato oltre 150 bottiglie (sì, davvero) di Monfortino 1958. Fu proprio quel vino a spingere Fontana a iniziare a visitare i produttori – un’avventura di autoformazione. All’epoca, la gente non comprava vino e i produttori italiani erano lontani dall’essere di moda. Diventò amico di personaggi come Giuseppe Rinaldi, Bruno Giacosa e Gianfranco Soldera, assicurandosi rapidamente allocazioni importanti dei loro vini, quando pochi altri mostravano interesse. I produttori, a loro volta, sostenevano che avesse un dono – una capacità unica di comprendere i vini in botte e predirne l’evoluzione futura. 
 Oggi percorre circa 80.000 km all’anno visitando i produttori – ma la grande maggioranza di questi chilometri è in Piemonte, poiché Fontana beve – e colleziona – quasi esclusivamente Nebbiolo. Questa sola uva rappresenta circa il 95% del suo consumo, dice, con Barolo e/o Barbaresco nel bicchiere ogni giorno. Tiene sempre le ultime uscite in frigo – anche qualche semplice Langhe Nebbiolo – ma almeno due volte a settimana stappa qualcosa di speciale dagli anni ’60 o ’80 con amici o produttori amanti del vino. 
 Sebbene il Nebbiolo sia solo uno dei tanti vitigni proclamati “il re dei vini”, per Fontana regna davvero sovrano. Quando gli chiedo perché, stupito di come possa bere così tanto di un’unica varietà, alza le spalle: “Il Nebbiolo è Nebbiolo.” Quando lo incalzo, dice di amarlo per la sua capacità d’invecchiamento, la struttura e l’eleganza – qualcosa che ritiene non si possa trovare nel Pinot Nero. Ricorda una recente cena con Galloni al ristorante Il Centro di Priocca, dove condivisero una bottiglia di La Tâche 2004 di Domaine de la Romanée-Conti insieme a un Barolo Borgogno 1947 e a un Vigna Rionda 1989 di Giacosa. Entrambi i Barolo, racconta, crebbero durante la cena – mentre la La Tâche svaniva lentamente. Per lui, la Borgogna (anche nelle bottiglie più ricercate al mondo) non è all’altezza del Nebbiolo. È un’opinione controversa – ma Fontana non è certo un uomo privo di opinioni. Dismette i vini di Cappellano e Accomasso, mentre ha idee ben precise su come dovrebbe essere fatto il Nebbiolo, preferendo la vinificazione tradizionale con botti vecchie – non vuole sentire il legno nel vino. Sostiene che troppi giovani produttori vadano in Borgogna e cerchino di emularne lo stile nei propri vini, perdendo così la loro identità piemontese. I vini risultanti, a suo parere, sono troppo tecnici, troppo puliti. “Un grande vino non può essere perfetto,” dice – suggerendo che proprio le imperfezioni contribuiscono a far sentire il vino vivo. 
 Sebbene i produttori più affermati e famosi dominino la sua collezione, apprezza anche vini di nomi più giovani come Trediberri, Crissante e Cascina Baricchi. Oltre al Nebbiolo, si concede qualche etichetta di Sangiovese – Soldera, per esempio, è all’altezza, così come SanCarlo (un produttore che ritiene rivaleggi con il primo). Le Pergole Torte di Montevertine un tempo sarebbero state una scelta ideale, ma ora preferisce Le Trame di Le Boncie. Gli piacciono Valentini ed Emidio Pepe, e acquistava Gravner, ma ritiene che lo stile sia cambiato nel 2004, quindi smise. 
 Vendette la sua attività di gioielleria nel 2000 – dedicandosi interamente al vino – visitando produttori, costruendo la sua collezione e vendendo a clienti selezionati (tra cui FINE+RARE ha la fortuna di figurare). Oggi Fontana possiede circa 9.000 bottiglie nella sua collezione. Ci mostra un video della sua cantina – sorprendentemente, con molti vini conservati in posizione verticale. Tutto ciò che è post 1990 è tenuto coricato, ma i vini più vecchi sono in piedi – una pratica che, sostiene, è migliore una volta raggiunta una certa età, con il sughero e l’umidità della cantina più importanti per la loro conservazione. È una collezione straordinaria, con incredibili verticali di molti vini. Il suo accesso sembra impareggiabile – ricevendo allocazioni più grandi di molti importatori, grazie ai suoi legami storici. È l’unico individuo, per esempio, a ricevere un’allocazione del Cru Brunate di Rinaldi – un vino altrimenti riservato esclusivamente alla famiglia. Alcune delle sue bottiglie più preziose sono il Santo Stefano 1964 di Giacosa e le magnum di Monfortino 1970 (“straordinario” – dice), mentre nutre un affetto particolare per il giovane Soldera 2015. 
 Ora, a 73 anni, Fontana sembra affascinato dal vino tanto quanto quando assaggiò per la prima volta quel Monfortino 1958. Gli chiedo se ci sia un vino che desidera ancora disperatamente assaggiare, un unicorno che sta ancora cercando: la risposta è no. Ha potuto provare ogni annata dei produttori che ama. È una risposta rara per un appassionato di vino – ma “Il Professore” non è certo un collezionista come gli altri. 
 – Fotografia di Rino Fontana a Il Centro di Dan Deibel 
 Esplora una selezione delle migliori verticali dalla cantina di Fontana, tutte le offerte italiane o leggi altri Editoriali

Amico del fondatore e critico di Vinous, Antonio Galloni, e con una cantina che fa invidia a chiunque, Rino Fontana è il collezionista di vini più famoso d’Italia. Lo abbiamo incontrato per scoprire il suo percorso, la sua collezione e la sua ossessione per un vitigno.

Antonio Galloni’s Wine Personality of the Year 2023, Rino Fontana is Italy’s most famous wine collector – we met the man to talk about his cellar

Rino Fontana – the wine collector like no other

Rino Fontana: un collezionista come nessun altro

In Sicily, for the feast day of San Giuseppe, they make a soup, a very plain soup of 
chickpeas, fava beans and wheat grains, all soaked and cooked separately before 
being combined with bitter wild greens and perhaps some broken pasta. It is a 
celebration not of poverty but in poverty. The richness of the meal comes from the 
time it takes, the hours of soaking and boiling, of picking leaves in muddy fields. 
The feast day of the patron saint of workers (and the stepfather of God) falls on 
the 19th March, full spring in the Sicilian countryside with the almond trees in 
blossom. San Giuseppe’s soup marks the last use of the previous year’s harvest, 
the last pulses and grains to be taken from the store which the summer’s baking 
heat and the rains of autumn had provided for the coming winter. It is both a soup 
and a celebration, but it is also a sacrifice – a sacrifice of time against an uncertain 
future, time given freely as a kind of guarantee. Cooking of any kind – but especially the lengthy processes of preserving, drying, 
pickling and curing – is really an act of optimism, an assertion that there will be a 
future in which to eat. And the more time and care you put into such a process, the 
more value you get out. For example, the longer a cure or a pickle takes, the longer, 
in general, it will last. In providing food for the future, this sacrifice also makes 
it much more likely that the future it was made for will indeed occur. A practical 
optimism, you could say. A spending of time, not just because you have little else 
to spend, but because it is prudent to do so. For much of the world now, of course, the situation is reversed: we can buy almost 
anything we want at any time we please and have it delivered almost immediately. 
And we seem to be encouraged to spend less time doing things like cooking. 
Time is a commodity, and rather than sacrifice our time, we’re encouraged to 
sacrifice time itself, to take shortcuts. Time is listed in any given recipe, along 
with the rest of the ingredients and equipment: two onions, one stick of celery, 
one carrot, 15 minutes preparation and two hours cooking time, but it is almost 
always consequently manipulated. Everybody knows – once they have followed 
a few recipes – that enough time is never given to cook an onion. ‘Sauté until soft 
and golden, about two minutes,’ writes the chef (or the editor insists so the recipe can fall into the category of ‘quick and easy weeknight suppers’ or ‘fifteen-minute 
meals’ or whatever it is they are currently trying to sell). The fact that nobody ever
sautéed an onion until soft and golden in less than 10 minutes is elided, sacrificed 
to the promise that this dish, now, will not cost too much of your time. Even recipes 
which can never be made quickly – soups, stews, cures – are touted as demanding 
just a little of your time and even less of your attention, your active time. The slow 
braise allows the cook to focus not on cooking, but on other things. To me, this 
is a lost opportunity. Yes, it is nice to know that dinner is safely squared away, 
puttering merrily to itself in a low oven. It is exciting to think that a jar of cabbage 
is slowly transforming into sauerkraut at the back of a dark cupboard. But if all we 
see is the prepared ingredients and the end result, how much do we miss of the 
metamorphosis in-between? Convenience is desirable, but over the last year, time has – for most of us – come at 
less of a premium. Even before that, though, I have always found a certain satisfaction 
in giving my complete attention to whatever I am cooking. This goes without saying for 
the quick and fast – for the doneness of a steak, or pasta, for deep-frying, or grilling 
delicate fish. However, it is also rewarding for the slower processes, for observing the 
slow changing of textures as liquids bubble and reduce.  If, for example, you are making marmalade, you could work out the setting 
temperature and, once the final boil has begun, insert a probe thermometer with 
an alarm set to sound when it reaches the precise temperature: all well and good. 
If, however, there isn’t a thermometer to hand – or, as is often the case, you only 
have one that is in sore need of calibration and therefore useless – you can fall 
back on the finger test your mother may or may not have taught you. Placing a 
stack of saucers in the fridge and – when you think the marmalade is nearly ready 
– spooning a little out onto a cold saucer, you prod the result with your finger to 
see if it wrinkles. What, then, if you don’t have a stack or even a single perfectly 
chilled saucer to hand? Then you have to watch the bubbles rise. 
The point of making marmalade or jam is not simply that you are cooking a liquid 
until it reaches approximately 105˚C, but rather that you are cooking a liquid until 
it becomes capable (as water is not) of reaching that temperature – which means it 
has to become thicker, stronger. The bubbles it creates, at first double the liquid in 
volume (bringing the inevitable worry that your pan is too small) before settling and 
lowering into a dense boil that threatens to catch on the bottom. Once you’ve seen 
it, that transformation is unmistakable, and if you had just stuck a thermometer 
in the pan and got on with something else, you would never have noticed. This 
(admittedly useful and in a working kitchen, essential) piece of technology would 
have removed you from the process, from the facts of cooking. This is true of any kind of technology – it is, by and large, its purpose. I am not necessarily suggesting 
that you replace your oven with a wood-fired stove and monitor the temperature 
with a questing hand (if you can’t hold it in there, it’s hot enough) – although that 
would, I think, be fun. Certainly, anything which makes our lives easier is not to be 
dismissed out of hand, but isn’t it always worth wondering what, at any moment, 
you can afford to lose? 
The point with cooking is that the time put in is not simply lost but rather spent 
or, invested – although sometimes you might not think it – wisely. A six-hour 
braise consumed in less than 30 minutes can seem hardly worth the effort, but 
only if you see the eating of food as the sole reason to cook it. When I think of 
meals I have cooked for other people, for birthdays or holidays or simply for 
the pleasure of company, it is rarely the eating of them – the few minutes of 
attacking a chicken or slurping up pasta or licking grease off fingers – which 
comes immediately to mind but rather their slow build-up. It’s the digging of the 
pit to build the fire that has to die before I bury the lamb, wrapped carefully in 
foil and sackcloth; the careful attendance to a boiling pan of stock, its bubbles 
changing in size and consistency as it gradually reduces into gravy; the oil 
slowly spitting out of a pot of ragù, its surface barely moving as it stews. These 
are the things I remember fondly, the nurturing process of bringing a meal 
together. And these moments aren’t solitary meditations – with any meal there 
is more to be done than just cooking something. There are salads to be made 
and dressings to be whipped, pasta to be rolled, tables to be set, cocktails to be 
mixed, and wine to be poured. The making of a meal is only a chore if you begin 
to do it wishing it were already over. If instead you begin to do it because you 
want to do it, with the end result of ‘something to eat’ as almost a by-product 
of a rewarding activity, then the pleasure you find in it changes. 
Although for most of us, it’s no longer – as it was for the Sicilians celebrating 
San Giuseppe – a matter of life or death. This choice to involve yourself 
purposefully in the everyday act of cooking, and otherwise preparing food, still 
has an air of sacrifice, of time exchanged in the promise of something greater. 
It is, I suppose, literally a sacrifice, as the time you allot to cooking is time 
you could have made available for emails, or exercise, or simply to idly scroll 
through Netflix adding films you will probably never watch to your list. But, as 
is the way of all such propitiatory acts, it is a sacrifice which contains the seeds 
of its desired outcome. What you put in determines what you get out, in the 
straightforward terms of a meal you can eat – but it is also its own reward. You 
know, as you reverently chop, or soak, or simmer, that you are investing your 
time to create something better than good. That whatever you are making will 
have a special richness to it. The richness of chickpeas, or water or gold.  This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue One

Margate-based chef and food writer, Thom Eagle, contemplates the value of spending more, not less, time in the kitchen.

Illustration by Stewart Walton.

Margate-based chef and food writer, Thom Eagle, contemplates the value of spending more, not less, time in the kitchen

FONDATA: Time for Food

Time for Food

Barolo Chinato. Utter these words and you’re likely to receive one of two responses – “I absolutely adore it” or “Come again?” For the unacquainted, Barolo Chinato is an aromatised, fortified wine from the Piedmont region. It is made by infusing up to three dozen herbs and spices, the principal one being quinine, in grape neutral alcohol. The infusion is then used to fortify Barolo DOGC wine made from 100% Nebbiolo grapes. The blend is then matured in oak barrels for up to 12 months. Prior to bottling, a small amount of sugar is added. At around 16% alcohol, it is the same strength as most red vermouths. Its name comes from the Italian “China”, for quinine.   Two men are credited with the invention of Barolo Chinato: Giuseppe Cappellano and Giulio Cocchi. It is thought Italian pharmacist Cappellano created the recipe in Serralunga d’Alba in the 1800s and Cocchi created a new formula in 1891.  “I first tasted Barolo Chinato 10-15 years ago, when I was forging my path in the world of vintage spirits, and still remember being struck by the complexity of the drink,” purveyor of antique and unusual spirits, Edgar Harden, tells me. “The soft, viscous mouthfeel, the fruit flavour compounded with herbs and spices and a bittersweet finish lingered until the next sip,” the Old Spirits Company director adds.   Harden is an expert in rare and vintage cocktail ingredients – for want of a better word – often from defunct or discontinued producers. He says we are “blessed” to live in a time where there is such a range of antique vermouths, amari and Barolo Chinatos available. If you know where to look, he says, there are “hundreds of brands from every little town in Italy” to be found, and interest in these liquids is at an “all-time high”.   Barolo Chinato was originally meant to be consumed any time after bottling. But, because of the additional alcohol and small dose of sugar, it can be left for decades, even a century, if it has been stored correctly – “in its brown glass bottle in proper, dark, humid, subterranean environment,” Harden explains.   “Although Barolo Chinato is only slightly stronger than a Barolo wine, the introduction of a grape-spirit-based liqueur into the blend provides it with significant fuel for longevity,” he continues. “The inevitable oxidisation that occurs in a product on the lower part of the alcohol spectrum, the different rates of decay of the 30-plus herbs and spices and the recombination of those receding and advancing flavours at rates not originally intended provide for magical and harmonious combinations for the palate.”  He says, while traditionally it would be served neat, room temperature, in a small glass after a meal with dark chocolate, it is increasingly being used as a stand-in for many vermouths and Amari in classic and modern cocktail recipes.  Cocchi owner and Managing Director Roberto Bava says this idea to promote Barolo Chinato as the perfect companion to dark chocolate (“Like the French had with Pineau de Charentes,” he explains) saved the drink from extinction in the 1970s.   To many people’s surprise, the idea worked and the number of producers steadily increased. “It was a very simple detail but it was the lifesaver of the whole category,” Bava says, “I am very proud of this”.   Bava acknowledges Barolo Chinato is and will likely remain a “boutique” product, in part because of its price – “of course it is more expensive than amaro – you have to use a DOGC Barolo to make Barolo Chinato”, he says – but he believes its heritage and quality will continue to recruit fans.  With these credentials, and an ever-growing appreciation for rare and intriguing liquids, we think this lesser-known export from the prestigious wine region is going to struggle to remain a secret for much longer. Explore more Editorial

It is fair to say Barolo Chinato is a niche category. While some may know it well, others might have never heard of it. We explore the history of Barolo Chinato and why it’s firmly got a place in our hearts and drinks cabinet

What is Barolo Chinato? Explore this Piedmont fortified wine's herb-and-quinine recipe, history, tasting notes, and traditional after-dinner serving.

What is Barolo Chinato?

Giuseppe Campagnola

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