9.1 The grape varieties

We begin by talking about Dolcetto, the everyday grape variety that produces the everyday wine. Widely cultivated in the southern part of Piedmont, with particular reference to the hills on the right bank of the river Tanaro, it has over time given rise to many wines with a precise reference to the territory of origin, but with characteristics that are always very consistent and inspired by youth, drinkability and versatility in food pairings. As for the name, the most important root seems to be linked to the high sugar content of its bunch and the limited acidity that favours the perception of a sweet sensation when tasting the berry. Another interpretation holds that the name derives from the fact that the variety loves to be grown on hillsides (dossét), including high hillsides, where the ripening of the bunches is favoured by marked temperature swings between day and night.
Particularly demanding in terms of the conditions in which it is grown, it loves white soils rich in limestone and higher-altitude zones, but with favourable exposures, where ripening proceeds regularly. It energetically signals the presence of unwelcome environmental conditions by accentuating berry drop during the ripening phase. In past decades, berry drop was a particularly unwelcome occurrence, especially for children: it fell to them to gather the berries that had fallen to the ground and help maintain an adequate level of production.
The use of Dolcetto bunches also as table grapes has contributed to identifying it as the everyday variety, as has its use in the production of a particular type of preserve, the cognà, made by long cooking of its must together with other seasonal fruits such as Madernassa pears, quince, Tonda and Gentile hazelnuts from the Langhe, walnuts and late-ripening figs.
Its plants make a pleasing aesthetic contribution in full autumn: as the colour changes, the leaves take on an agreeable reddish hue that shifts towards orange, daubing brushstrokes of colour across the hilltops.

Originating on the softer hills of the Monferrato between Asti and Alessandria, the Barbera variety arrived on the hills of the Alba area, first in the Roero and then in the Langhe, around the middle of the nineteenth century.
Despite the gradual reduction in the area under vine that has characterised Piedmontese viticulture in recent decades, Barbera remains to this day the most widespread variety on the hills of this region, favoured by its marked ability to adapt to various soil and environmental conditions, its propensity to maintain consistent production volumes over time, and its undoubted versatility in productive behaviour, both in generating young, ready-to-drink wines and in producing wines of structure and pronounced longevity. For these qualities of full generosity, Barbera has not remained confined to the Piedmontese hills, but has crossed their borders to settle also in the Oltrepò Pavese, on the Colli Piacentini, on those of Parma and in many areas of other Italian regions. On the hills of Barolo it buds in the first fifteen days of April, flowers between the end of May and the beginning of June, and ripens its bunches between the end of September and the beginning of October, often at the same time as Nebbiolo, another late-ripening variety of the territory.
In general it is a plant with high vigour, with excellent fertility that encourages a rather generous production each year. Particularly pronounced is also its tendency to accumulate sugars during the ripening of the grapes, and for this reason the load of bunches on the individual plant must be managed carefully, and the strategic ripening phase followed with great attention.
At the table, Barbera wine presents itself as rather versatile and extrovert, not only in its many denomination-of-origin expressions, but also in the styles that place side by side wines of great fragrance and ready consumption alongside others of fine fullness, considerable structure and extended ageing — the former capable of accompanying simple, sometimes rustic dishes such as bagna caoda, certainly not particularly demanding, the latter suited to more elaborate, savoury and complex dishes.
The palette of a supernatural painter uses the leaves of Barbera to give the hill landscape of Barolo a reddish hue with a gradual tendency towards violet, enlivening a panorama that is already rich and varied in its own right.

Noble, aristocratic and particularly prestigious, Nebbiolo is without doubt the most demanding variety in terms of soil and environment of the entire Piedmontese viticultural context. It loves well sun-exposed hills, in particular sheltered zones, white soils and also those where clay enriches a terrain already rich in silt and limestone. As for its origin, Nebbiolo appears to have been born in the northern part of Lombardy, between Brianza and Valtellina, from where it would gradually have moved westwards into Alto Piemonte and the Aosta Valley, and subsequently, crossing the Monferrato of Asti, onto the hills of the Roero and those of the Langhe, where over time it has found its most precious interpreters. Although Nebbiolo's origin seems to lie elsewhere, it is on the hills of the Langhe and the Roero that this variety has found its optimal spaces, as confirmed by current vineyard areas: of the 9,500–10,000 hectares cultivated worldwide, almost 6,000 hectares are located on the hills of Alba.
And now the origin of the name. Here too there are two interpretations. There are those who maintain that Nebbiolo is the "variety of the mists" in the sense that it ripens its bunches when autumn is well advanced and the hillsides are caressed by thin veils of fog. Others link the identity of the mist to the slightly hazy colouring of its berries, whose skin is abundantly covered by a layer of bloom.
The late-ripening variety par excellence, Nebbiolo is the first to bud at the beginning of April. Depending on the year it flowers and sets between the end of May and the beginning of June, undergoes véraison (colour change) between the end of July and the beginning of August, and ripens its bunches between the end of September and the middle of October.
Nebbiolo also has excellent production versatility: it has demonstrated over time a marked propensity for the production of sparkling wines, in particular those made by the Classic Method, and has also revealed a definite capacity to produce young, ready-to-drink wines such as Langhe Nebbiolo, but its most concrete vocation lies in generating wines of structure, richness and complexity such as Barolo and Barbaresco, strongly inspired to resist the ravages of time over the long term.
Between the end of October and throughout November the leaves of Nebbiolo turn yellow, bringing warm, refined chromatic notes to an autumn landscape that lives on great variability.