3.2 Luciano's first Barolo

The memories crowd in and Luciano recalls: "My first Nebbiolo vineyard for Barolo was not large, barely more than a hectare, and its planting structure was still in decent shape, to the point that a good production could be obtained straight away. During the various seasons of the year I personally carried out the cultivation operations, using the little free time that a demanding job like mine left me. Already in that 1974 the vineyard bore fruit well, even if the cultivation activities were not easy to carry out. With the propagation method that was still in vogue at the time — layering — it was not easy to tell which plant was producing. Many parts of the rows consisted of a sort of very long shoot that, by virtue of the layering, had no break in continuity. Also for this reason, long pruning was carried out and on the new shoots that sprouted it was not easy to apply the practice of thinning, which I had seen done in Burgundy. But summer thinning was a practice I wanted to implement at all costs even then, above all in order to balance the quantity of grape clusters present on the plant".
Meanwhile, Luciano and his family had moved house from the centre of Barolo to a house at n° 57 Via Alba. It was a considerably larger house than the first. And above all it also had work and storage spaces on the ground floor that could be useful if Luciano wanted to vinify and give space to his dreams.
And so it happened: in the autumn of 1974 Luciano began to vinify in these ground-floor spaces the grapes produced in the vineyard he had purchased. What existed at the time was a true "vin de garage".
The first vinification, in 1974, yielded a minuscule production: just 1,570 bottles, the commercialisation of which would begin on 1 January 1978.
At this point, he had to think about packaging this wine and Luciano tried to immediately create a package that expressed the quality characteristics of that Barolo: as the container he chose the traditional Albeisa bottle; as for the label he imagined one that recalled in style the historical layout of Barolo labels and also those used in Burgundy for their red wines. As regards the market, in that first phase of sales he received enormous help from his brother Bruno, who had many friends and work colleagues. Thanks to this mechanism and word of mouth, year after year he sold all the Barolo produced and was happy to have adopted this solution.
Meanwhile, as Luciano cultivated his vineyard and made the right improvements, production increased in quantity. Therefore, he needed to find other market solutions, more organised and professional ones.

At industry level, things continued to improve. After several years of progress, the leading producers had realised that, to make the definitive leap in quality, Barolo would have to move from DOC to DOCG. The denominazione di origine controllata had been an important step. It had marked significant growth in the wine's overall journey. But now it was no longer enough. Despite its acquired status, Barolo continued to suffer the outrage of commercial fraud, which the documentary control of the DOC was unable to eradicate. It was necessary to move from documentary control to physical control, and this could be achieved through recognition of the Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita.

The DOCG, in fact, would require the application of a numbered state seal that would eliminate spurious productions not substantiated by reference to the vineyard of origin.
Thus, after several years of discussions and projects, on 1 July 1980 Barolo was recognised as a DOCG wine, and the application of this new status would first concern the 1980 vintage.