Our wine guru Gary Chevsky, back in November 2009, experimented with some Barbera wines from Piemonte:

“Unclear why anyone would want to drink aged Barbera, a wine grape that is associated with easy quaffing and everyday meals. In the land where Nebbiolo is firmly the king, why mess with that? Let Barbera and Dolcetto play their lowly part in the food chain. Affordable, refreshing, satisfyingly easy drinking table wines. What would the world do without them, no?

But of course someone is always ready to challenge status quo, try to make an eagle out of a sparrow, a Boeing out of a paper plane. Treat Dolcetto like a more serious grape, and you get Dolcetto di Dogliani, deeper, richer, more ageable. Treat Barbera like that, and what do you get?

On Monday, a small group of enthusiasts got together at a Ross Bott tasting in Los Altos to assess 1999-2001 Barberas by La Spinetta. La Spinetta has a “standard” or lower-end Ca’ Di Pian wine that costs in the teens, and a higher-end wine that costs $40-50. Having tasted Gaja’s 1995 Barbera “Sitorey” earlier this year and having found it a powerful, fresh, and nuanced wine, my expectations were mixed. After all, that was Gaja! Could anyone else approach that effort?

From the mailer by Ross Bott, the organizer:

The varietal is naturally high in acid and low in tannins, and, when vinified in a lighter style to be drunk young, is a fine everyday wine to complement pastas and other northern Italian dishes. However, when yields are kept low and the grapes are harvested at riper levels, the resultant wines can be deep, complex and long aging, and marry particularly well with new medium toasted (or charred) oak barrels. Ironically, this approach is a relatively recent phenomenon in Piedmonte. In fact, some of the earliest examples of this approach were in the Shennandoah Valley in California, where Montevina made some great old Special Selection Barberas in the late 1970s — to my view the most exciting wines ever to come out of the Sierra Foothills.

In 1998, Giuseppe Rivetti began to make a Barbera Superiore under his La Spinetta label, a serious, high-end approach involving old vines, low yields, and aging for 12-18 months in new French oak. Rivetti was born in Argentina, but his family was Piedmontese, and he returned in 1977 to the Asti region, in an area then known for Moscato d’Asti, a fragrant, low alcohol wine made from a varietal in the Muscat family. After producing some landmark examples of this white wine, he ventured into reds in 1985, first with Barbera and later adding Barbarescos and Barolos. He produces three Barberas a year, a Ca’ Di Pian which is richer and riper than most Barberas, but sees less oak, a Gallina from a single vineyard which also provides the grapes for his Barbaresco, and a Superiore, which is a reserve bottling from a selection of his best barrels. Both of the latter get extended barrel treatment and are among the three or four best Barberas produced anywhere.

Tonight, we’ll try six La Spinetta Barberas, a pair from each of 1999, 2000 and 2001. One member of each pair will be the lightly oaked Ca’ Di Pian and the other an example of his highest end Barberas which get extended treatment in new oak.”

While the top 3 wines still “showed” young, it is as if they had artificially been beefed up to last longer, and the age did not give them subtlety, complexity, and secondary flavors that I’ve seen develop in properly aged ageworthy wines. It seemed rather pointless to me to spend $45 a bottle, then cellar it for 10 years, when in that range one finds some wonderful Nebbiolo and Sangiovese options. While obviously we confirmed Barbera’s ageability, I would not call that ageworthiness. It bothered me that the wines lacked finesse and complexity, and the question that firmly stuck in my mind was – “What’s the point!???”

With the holidays upon us, might be nice to offer your guests something different as an hor’d’oeuvre. Bagna càuda, which translates into ‘warm bath’ is a famous Piemontese dish, with anchovies as the key ingredient. Seems funny that Piemonte, as one of the only regions in Italy that doesn’t touch the sea would have a dish with anchovies as its base. The history behind this is that 300 years ago, Piemontese people that harvested salt and butter in the mountains would trade along the ancient salt routes in exchange for anchovies from Liguria.

Now before you think, anchovies, yuck, too salty, the key here is that the anchovies are melted in olive oil. You have to be careful not to fry them or else the anchovies loose all their flavour. The fact that you combine the anchovies with garlic (soaked first in milk), butter and olive oil makes it clear how this is a yummy dish to set in the middle of a table for friends to gather round and enjoy large plates of raw vegetables and a good bottle of Barolo.

Ingredients: (per head)

• ¾ head of garlic
• 50 grams (1/4 cup) of chopped anchovies fillets
• 60 ml (¼ cup) of milk
• 150 ml (10 table spoons) of olive oil
• 15 gm (1 tbps) butter
• Pinch of salt
• Dash of vinegar

Suggested vegetables:

• Peppers (Capsicums)
• Celery
• Endives
• Fennel 
• Cabbage

Country Bread 

Directions:

1. Break the garlic into cloves and peel
2. Place the garlic in a saucepan and cover with the milk until the garlic is tender (the milk mellows the garlic)
3. Discard the milk and chop the garlic coarsely
4. Sprinkle the garlic with fine salty and then cut the garlic finely
5. Return the garlic to the saucepan and add the olive oil
6. Rise the salt off the anchovies and wash them in vineagar
7. Pat the anchovies dry, chop them up and add them to the oil and garlic
8. Return the pan to a low heat (the oil must not boil) and stir continuously (in order to not burn the garlic)
9. Stir until the mixture reaches an even consistency and after 20min, add the butter, stirring it in until it melts
10. Serve in an earthware pot over a flame. It is key that dip remains warm
11. Dip raw veggies or bread

Recommend wine: Nebbiolo dei Roeri

It can be hard to find fresh anchovies and generally they are sold preserved in salt, but if that is the case, just soak them in water to get rid of the excess salt. You might also have to take out the bone.