The Barbera d'Alba from Altare is supple, juicy and immediate, with an abundance of dark red and purple fruits, sweet spices and flowers. Silky and beautifully expressive in the glass, it will be a great pleasure to drink over the next few years with its lovely core of fruit and bracing acidity.

During harvest the team doesn’t change, it’s the seven “usual suspects” that work all year long between the cellar and the vineyards. Everyone participates, and it usually stretches over 2 months of non-stop work. This year everything was fast but smooth, and we had the time to plan and execute. We were able to do multiple harvests in the same vineyard in order to end up with the best juice.

Our entry level wines typically reflect what we like to drink on a daily basis, and these are the wines we made again this vintage: juicy and ready to drink. The concentration of the vintage gave us rich wines, but we were able to balance the acidity with multiple harvests. The vineyards were not all in the same ripening pattern, so we picked when they were ready. Also, we had very little threat of rain so time was on our side, and we were able to wait without pressure. The threat of rain is what we are always up against. In 2022 we only had one stretch of rain around the end of September, and we were finished right before.

The flavescenza dorata is really having an impact of our Barbera production. We keep trying, experimenting and replacing the plants, this disease is really giving us a hard time, it’s hard to eradicate and no solution has been found so far."

Location: La Morra

Vine Age: 10 to 30 years old

Winemaking Notes: The grapes are harvested by hand. They macerate with their skins at a controlled temperature in rotary fermentors for 3-4 days. The wine ages for 5 months in French barriques. Fermentation occurs naturally with indigenous yeast as does the malolactic fermentation. The wine is not fined, filtered, or clarified. No substances that could modify the color or the structure of the wine is ever used.