On the threshold of the end of the harvest in the Langhe, a round table was held by the producers of the Deditus Association dedicated to the harvest, and more generally, to the 2021 vintage for Nebbiolo da Barolo.
Eight historic Barolo producers had the opportunity to discuss and debate the vintage, the harvest, but also the weather and the challenges for the future.
“2021 was a year characterised by great extremes from a climatic point of view,” as Gianluca Torrengo, oenologist at the Prunotto winery, sums up. The spring, “which fortunately started a little late” as Elena Cordero (Cordero di Montezemolo) points out, was very rainy, while the summer will go down in history for the scarcity of rain. “Barolo has been very dry, even compared to neighbouring Barbaresco and Roero,” confirms Luca Sandrone (Sandrone Luciano). Finally, a final twist in recent weeks, with a big increase in the daily temperature range: a real “panacea” for the vines.
“Nebbiolo has managed to make a perfect synthesis of these extremes, and to arrive in the cellar with a truly surprising and admirable balance,” Luca Sandrone continues, as an ability to synthesise and harmonise all these variants, to give its best. In fact, all producers are faced with grapes with “perfect technological and phenolic ripeness”, as Cesare Benvenuto, (Pio Cesare) points out.
“It has certainly been an exciting year, because all sorts of things have happened, with variable and often unpredictable phases, to which we will have to adapt,” confirms Gianluca Torrengo, but at the same time the real emotion has been “the beauty of the grapes, Nebbiolo and others, which arrived at the winery healthy, concentrated and with great personality. On the one hand, therefore,” summarises Stefano Gagliardo (Poderi Gianni Gagliardo), “the drought did not create any problems,” but on the other hand, this was certainly not a year that will be remembered for its abundance: “the bunches had fewer grapes, a little smaller, but for this very reason rich and concentrated,” because,” recalls Lorenzo Scavino (Azelia), “as my father says, to make a great wine, the vines have to suffer a little.
A series of well-defined adjectives emerge from the producers for these grapes, such as “harmony and balance”, “personality and complexity” and, clearly, “the vibrant elegance”, in the words of Matteo Sardagna (Poderi Luigi Einaudi), typical of Barolo. “We can therefore say that Nebbiolo is certainly better off in the drought than in the rain,” says Matteo Sardagna, ironically but not excessively, “because the grapes are exceptionally beautiful, not at all withered, and the harvest, which is certainly earlier than in the past, will last for many, and certainly for us, until the third week of October.
And the work, according to Luca Sandrone, is not yet over. “I am still relying on these weeks, dry and fine weather after some rain and with a different temperature range, which, combined with exceptionally healthy grapes, allow what I call the ‘ripening’ of the grapes, the real icing on the cake for Nebbiolo”.
An important issue that emerged from the debate was the role of the grower in this vegetative cycle. “The farmer’s objective,” Cesare Benvenuto pointed out, “is always to help the plant to be able to cope in the best possible way with moments of stress, not only in the summer season, but all year round”. In recent years, with the general changes in climate, “clearly the winegrower’s attention has also changed,” explains Stefano Chiarlo (Michele Chiarlo), “and we have developed strategies to adapt to climate change in order to maintain freshness, acidity and elegance: working hard in the autumn and touching the grapes and leaves as late as possible. Cesare Benvenuto confirms: “we always pay great attention to the management of vegetation, so as to keep the bunches covered and protected from the most damaging exposures, and we concentrate a great deal of work in the autumn, to put the vines in the right conditions to deal with whatever vintage they are facing.”
“Our challenge,” continues Stefano Chiarlo, “is to be able to control and manage these climatic changes, a skill we have developed over almost twenty years of experience in these environmental conditions, which today allows us to count on a useful history”. It’s a real game of balance and sensitivity to “be ever more attentive to needs and ever more ready to deal with any situation,” concludes Gianluca Torrengo. And you can see the results, with a quality that has certainly improved in general over the last 10-20 years.
These are undoubtedly promising premises, but there is still a long way to go. This will be followed by vinification and years of ageing for the wine, and then the evaluation at the time of its launch on the market, “because” concludes Deditus President Gianni Gagliardo, with typical pragmatism, “things are always judged when they are done”.
