Panorama Photo

What a good viewpoint! I remember Barolo being on a hillside, here it is completely different and the wine is the key element framing the village!

Yes Christoph, in Barolo everything is done for the wine.
The pano is in February and the vineyards are without leaves. Are very beautiful the autumn colors of the vineyards. This year I hope to photograph them.

king of the wines and wine of the kings...

Not a bad slogan :-). Give me a little time and I'll tell you the story of Barolo. In the meantime I decreased a little the saturation.

For me this is symphony! Never drunk a better wine like this!

I hope, you post a panorama in autumn.

The Barolo is not a historical Italian wine, such as Chianti. At the beginning, Barolo was only a bad sweet wine :-).

The Barolo like excellent wine, was born in the mid-19th century, when Cavour, an Italian politician, invited the French enologist Louis Oudart to the Barolo region to improve the winemaking techniques of the local producers. Oudart was able to ferment the Nebbiolo must completely dry, making the first modern Barolo. The Barolo, according to the technique of Oudart, is subjected to a maceration time which can reach 30 days (it is a very, very long time for a wine).

This new red wine soon became the favorite among the nobility of Turin. It soon became also the official wine of the gala dinners of the ruling House of Savoy, giving rise to the popular description of Barolo as '"the wine of kings, the king of wines".

But at the beginning of the 20th century, the quality of the wine began to decline. The Barolo was always considered a great quality wine, but it was producing less and less. In the mid-20th century, the Nebbiolo (the grape used to produce Barolo) was sold at incredibly low prices. The grapes were often bought by the French, who use it to blend low quality wines.

The reason for this decline is that the Barolo is very rich in tannin and to have a quality wine it could take more than 10 years for the wine to soften up and become ready for drinking. A so long time was unfortunately incompatible with the modern times and the economic needs of producers.

But between 1970 and 1980 the situation changed radically. Then I'll talk about the "new" Barolo and the so-called Barolo war.

Ma in definitiva, qui a Barolo quante volte scriveresti la fatidica parola "Est"?

I'll answer you right away.

In the 1970-1980 a group of Barolo producers, called "Barolo boys" went to Burgundy, in France to learn their winemaking techniques. On return they used new techniques: shorter periods for maceration (days as opposed to weeks) and fermentation (usually 48–72 hours or at most 8–10 days), less time aging in new small oak barrels and an extended period of bottle aging prior to release. And started producing Barolo with this technique.

At this point, broke the so-called "Barolo war", between "traditionalists" and "modernists". The traditionalists said that the one produced in this way was not true Barolo and were also taken legal action.

But an unexpected event happened. The new Barolo, which was much easier to produce, was immediately a big commercial success and also liked the wine experts. The vineyards of the area, which in the years 1970-80 were almost abandoned in a few years back to be in great demand. The modernists won. But some producers continued to produce Barolo the old way.

In short, there are two types of Barolo, one produced by the "modernists" with the new techniques (the majority) and those produced by the "traditionalists" from the old techniques.

I am not an expert in Barolo. Barolo is an expensive wine and can be rarely drank. My opinion is that the new Barolo is a great wine, but it is a different wine from traditional Barolo (which still has yet produced).