Temper and Timber in Asti?

Hope your boxes of wine didn't get soaked.
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Some, actually. The cellar's in one of the higher portions of the basement, but while I was worried about some encased Trimbachs of recent purchase, the most damage is actually to the labels of the fat bottles -- mostly pinot and syrah from around the world -- that will not fit in my racking. Yet another reason to dislike such bottle shapes.

I may have been reflexively protective of the honor of the fair maiden Barbera.
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I think that maidenhead was lost to medium toast a long while ago.

I should just say that it sounds like Barbera is not recovering from the plague of crappy International winemaking as quickly as some other appellations, and that's sad. Maybe she is in fact a slut, in other words.
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I shan't cast aspersions. But, look: we sat through one PowerPoint demo, headed by the Hastae group of (wait for it) Berta, Braida, Chiarlo, Coppo, Prunotto, and Vietti, in which it was strongly suggested that the switch from guyot to spur cordon training would have key qualitative effects on the future of barbera. The conclusions were effectively demonstrated by both the research results and the wines poured to demonstrate those results, but...well, the reasons for the switch were to increase tannin and polyphenol extraction and to "fix" the wine's color while it ages.

No, really, that's what they said.

It won't surprise you to learn that our group pretty much unanimously preferred the guyot-trained wines to the spur-cordon wines. It also won't surprise you to learn that we generally found these goals to be nonsensical. Yes, if this research is being applied to harsh, yappy little mutts of malic snappishness and underripe fruit in pale visage, then sure...let's by all means improve extraction and color. But in wines that are already tending towards purple and are going to be pummeled by oak tannin before they're bottled? I just don't get it. I really don't.

It is a strange artifact of the way the press has rewarded certain wine styles in Italy that many producers I've talked to have wines they make that are intended to get points and that they don't like much. That's bad enough, but the producers you are referring to seem to actually like those wines, which is really a problem.
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I will note for the record that Chiarlo and several others at the above-mentioned lecture, and again at the Nizza seminar where things really blew up, insisted that it would be ludicrous to assume that anyone is making wines to satisfy a market demand. Of course, at both those events and at many producer visits afterwards, other producers said that very thing both explictly and implicity. You can be sure that the stars and stripes took the majority of the targeted abuse/marketing focus in this regard.

I think a major part of the issue is the different views of the overall barbera landscape one gets in the Piedmont vs. in an export market, but I'm going to wait for the longer post on that for now.
 
Next time you're out here, let me know and we'll drink some unravished Barbera and Grignolino, get that oaky taste out of your mouth.
 
I'd be happy to drink more of those La Casaccia wines, for sure, though anything else would also be welcome. But every time I let you know I'm out there, you're otherwhere. Which has gotten in the way of our collective ensaucement.
 
Cory, Thor,

Curious. Did Lorenzo Corino or the boys of Cascina Roera (Claudio Rosso and Piero Nebiolo, (actual names)) make any appearances, and/or did you visit them in, the midst of all this barbera madness?
 
Did you try their Grignolino?
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Oh, God. In that is a horrible and contentious story (none of it their fault in the least, nor even vaguely related to their wines) which I will tell you after about the fifteenth glass the next time we get to taste together...but the answer is: yes, eventually. I'm not going to dig up the note now, sorry. In the fullness of time, which will actually be sooner than my norm if I ever get off basement bucket patrol.

Matteo: no they weren't tasted, and no we didn't visit them. This was an event that wineries had to pay to get into, I think (no real surprise there), and many chose not to pay (also no surprise), including a good number of the quality names that some here would identify. It won't surprise anyone to learn that some of the best barbera we tasted was not offered at the event, but tasted in our post-convention touring (Brovia, I'm looking at you while trying to ignore your "Brea").

And here's another perspective. If someone wanted to insist that the problem was not wood, nor extraction, nor a lack of varietal character (as I would probably contend), but rather a complete morass of inconsistent styles with no identifiable varietal or regional identity, I would not argue with them.
 
originally posted by Thor:
If someone wanted to insist that the problem was not . . . a lack of varietal character, but rather a complete morass . . . with no identifiable varietal . . . identity, I would not argue with them.
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?
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Thor:
If someone wanted to insist that the problem was not . . . a lack of varietal character, but rather a complete morass . . . with no identifiable varietal . . . identity, I would not argue with them.
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?
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I think Thor means that the wines weren't distinguished as being from a certain place or with a consistent style. The bloggers apparently did not care for a number of the resulting wines, which was not simply attributable to too much wood aging, long hang times, etc.
 
Tom's got the gist of it. The complaints fell into two categories:

1) The wines are too [whatever] or not [whatever] enough. These are specific complaints.

2) Different wines deserve all of those potential complaints, and the problem is not any one or two of them, but rather the overall impression of incohesion that results. In other words, the problem isn't that some of the wines don't show barbera character, but that some do and some don't.

Both categories are, I think, reasonable responses for someone who doesn't like what they tasted.

My own personal opinion was that I didn't care about the multiplicity of styles, but rather about the anonymity of several broad style categories, so in general I fall into the first rather than the second camp. At least, that's my current opinion. I might change my mind.
 
The 2007 Sor del Drago was extraordinarily good. The Valmaggione is a nebbiolo, but we didn't taste it anyway.
 
originally posted by Thor:
The 2007 Sor del Drago was extraordinarily good. The Valmaggione is a nebbiolo, but we didn't taste it anyway.
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Thank you for both notes. (I have a local transcription error to fix!)
 
OK, so the upshot of all this is:

1 - The producers who paid to show their barberas to the bloggers presented (mostly) over-extracted, over-oaked, over-something wines, perhaps for the purpose of mining a new (supposedly) eager species of media mouthpiece to gather momentum in announcing their super-barb type wines to the world, and ended up with an earful of complaints instead. Is that right?

2 - There are many producers who are genuinely proud of their humble, acidic, brighter, lighter versions of recognizable Barbera wines, and they just weren't part of this event, for whatever reason.

3 - Therefore, as long as one searches, one stands the chance to be rewarded with more "traditional" Barberas with typicities described above. Ie, they still exist, but that's not what's being hyped today.

4 - A question: Is this a sort of mirror image of the traditionalist vs modernist debates that went on between various Barolo producers in the past? (Will leave brunello out of this for now...)
 
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
OK, so the upshot of all this is:

4 - A question: Is this a sort of mirror image of the traditionalist vs modernist debates that went on between various Barolo producers in the past? (Will leave brunello out of this for now...)
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I'm not sure. Either Luca or a buddy of his (Luca Fiorli I think is his name) said to me that new oak on Barbera is not the same as new oak on Barolo and can work. OTOH, it sounds as though there may be more than just new oak at work here.
 
1 - The producers who paid to show their barberas to the bloggers presented (mostly) over-extracted, over-oaked, over-something wines, perhaps for the purpose of mining a new (supposedly) eager species of media mouthpiece to gather momentum in announcing their super-barb type wines to the world, and ended up with an earful of complaints instead. Is that right?
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Not entirely. The bloggers were put together by the inimitable Jeremy Parzen (Do Bianchi to you blog-reading types), but we were only about one tenth of the attendees, most of the rest of whom were journalists and buyers from around the world. The digital pushback against the wines was indeed led (at least in English) by us, but the verbal controversy was almost exclusively between non-Italian press/buyers, and the producers and their representatives. We were first by a day, but that doesn't mean much, and the actual heat and energy of the day two bickering had nothing at all to do with us. Did we help energize the antipathy? Perhaps, perhaps not. Some of the objectors do indeed read our blogs. But it doesn't really matter. I don't think the complaints were particularly blog-specific, nor specific to our group. I think they would have been raised whether or not we were there.

It's tempting to view it as a PR disaster, and I think the organizers viewed it that way for much of day 2, but I think that's a misread on their part, and I think they've changed their opinion as well. Publicity is publicity. Was anyone talking about these wines a week and a half ago? Now, at least, there's some conversation in certain circles.

I don't think the bloggers had any effect on the producers' future plans. I don't think the journalists had any effect on the producers' future plans, though their chance was higher than ours. If we're all right and these wines really can't and won't sell, then maybe next year will be different. If we're not, then obviously they won't listen, and shouldn't.

I really can't say what they thought of the blog experiment. On one hand, it's not yet done, and many of us are yet to finish our posts...especially the notes attached to names (from those of us who do so), which will be very bothersome for many producers. On the other hand, they seemed mostly pleased despite the carping, though our supposed "freedom" drew a lot -- a lot -- of whining and backbiting from the producers as the week went on, and I don't think the heart of their objection was to what we wrote, but what we did. In the end, I have no idea how they'll view the experiment. But I think we were only the second group of bloggers to really intrude on the regular narrative (the live-blogging of a Gaja tasting was the first biggie), and I think the experiment might be here to stay, unless too many producers object.

Next time, though, I'd predict that some bigger-name bloggers will be invited, or at least requested in stronger terms than they were this year. The conversation about whether that's good or bad is not one I'm going to participate in.

2 - There are many producers who are genuinely proud of the humble, acidic, brighter, lighter versions of recognizable Barbera wines, and they just weren't part of this event, for whatever reason.
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Some were. But I think "many" is an exaggeration. Everything has someone who's proud of it. Mostly, these wines do not reflect what all -- all -- the old books describe as barbera. So I don't know if anyone's exactly "proud."

3 - Therefore, as long as one searches, one stands the chance to be rewarded with more "traditioanl" Barberas with typicities described above. Ie, they still exist, but that's not what's being hyped today.
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That part's true.

4 - A question: Is this a sort of mirror image of the traditionalist vs modernist debates that went on between various Barolo producers in the past?
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I don't think so. Most producers have moderned-up their barberas by someone's definition, no matter the fermentation/aging vessels. The question is one of goals: better barbera, or a "more important" wine? The desire to make "important" wine from barbera is, in my opinion, increased by not having reputed sites in the Langhe. Producers of Barolo/Barbaresco were not trying to make their wines important -- they were already considered so -- but to direct the nature of that importance. Barbera producers elsewhere are, at least in my opinion, taking Volkswagen bugs and attempting to race Formula 1 with them.
 
new oak on Barbera is not the same as new oak on Barolo and can work. OTOH, it sounds as though there may be more than just new oak at work here.
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I can't share the preference for oaked nebbiolo, which is rarely any good for my palate, but I would argue the opposite: that wines made from nebbiolo can handle more wood than those made from barbera. Doesn't mean I like them more, but I dislike them less, if that makes sense.

I also don't agree that, in general, new oak and barbera go well together. One out of ten, maybe. Too much acid and too much oak are...well, yuck.
 
Does anyone know how many of the Italian journalist defenders work for Berlusconi?

Doesn't the dissent of the bloggers play into Berlusconi's attack on the internet, cf., the recent criminal conviction of three Google executives?
 
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