Grape Varietal – Tasting – Barbera

Grape Varietal – Tasting – Barbera

The wine that I choose to taste for this grape was the Barbera d’Alba Vigna Martina. It was a bottle my mother actually had sitting around. The vintage of the grape was 2001 . The region that this grape comes from is the piemonte region and also the sub-region of Barbera D’alba. The bottle price was $33.95 and the bottle was purchased from a Wine and Spirits store in Pennsylvania. I would suggest that this wine is paired with heavy pasta with a heavy cream sauce, lasagna, anything Italian, or anything very flavorful to mask how strong/intense this wine is.

The color of this wine was very dark and bold. It was a very dark red, so dark that it was almost purple. The aroma of the wine was very strong and pungent. The aroma was so intense that I could almost taste the wine through its smell. After swirling the glass a couple times the wine opened up a bit more and became less intense, but it was still overwhelming. The first taste was very overpowering. I did not like the first taste of this wine and didn’t want to continue drinking to give it a better taste. My first overall impression of this wine was that it was too strong for my immature palate and I didn’t want to drink it.

The aroma was somewhat sweet and tart at the same time. My nose stung with every sniff. The scents that I could detect were very rich and dark fruits, such as jammy strawberries and blackberries, but I also detected a lot of spices and pepper. The taste was overwhelming spices and very strong on the sides of the tongue. The only fruit I could detect was cherries. After my tongue calmed down the after taste was somewhat pleasant.

The astringency of the wine was very rough in my opinion and I did not appreciate really anything going on with this particular wine. There seemed to be no real sugar-acid balance in the wine because all I could really taste was acid. If there had been more to the wine for me to taste flavor wise, maybe I wouldn’t have been so overwhelmed with the acidity level. There could have definitely been a stronger sweet component added to the wine. The alcohol content of the wine was not particularly noticeable, but I wasn’t noticing anything past the acid.

I found the wine to be very bitter and unpleasant. The bitterness of the wine stung my tongue and jaw, made me clench my mouth hard, and then clung there for a few moments until it eventually dissipated.

The other dominate varieties of this region are Nebbiolo and Dolcetto. The major climate constraints for this particular wine is a soil type to be moderately loose-packed, slightly sandy and limestone-based. The wines are planted south-facing and 380 meters above sea level.

The harvest period for this particular wine is the end of September and beginning of October and they perform a manual harvest. The fermentation for this wine lasts approximately 12-15 days in stainless steel tanks, and once that is complete the wine is racked into half-new and half-one year old French oak barriques for 12 months to reach their mature point. The wine is then bottled and before release the wine stays in a cellar for at least 8 more months. 

Grape Varietal - Barbera

Grape Varietal - Barbera

The Barbera grape has been gaining a greater appreciation and more respect for the last 20 years. It was so widely planted that is became considered as ordinary and lost its value. Barbera is the most common grape in the north-western part of Italy known as Piemonte. In Piemonte, Barbera is an everyday wine that is found on all households tables and all local restaurants and taverns. Barbera always gives way to the more noble of wines from Piemonte, the other notorious grape known as Neddiolo. Nebbiolo is used for the more special occasions and professional affairs, but Barbera accumulates fifteen times more acreage than Nebbiolo.

Barbera is characterized by it’s ‘lower-than-usual yields and French oak barrels’. Barbera is a natural at producing more concentrated wines when it is grown on a site that is specific to it’s necessities as a grape. It cannot be too cool or poorly exposed to light because it has a natural excess of acidity and a shortage of tannins, causing it to initially be more sensitive. Their shortage of tannins is usually counteracted by the oak barreling, which also leaves higher acidity wines. Some Barbera winemakers will de-acidify wines by adding calcium carbonate to them. The fermentation of Barbera is relatively standard in comparison to its neighboring grapes. It is a relatively easy vine to grow which explains why it is so widely planted. It is very common in Piemonte, Lombardy around Milan, Sardinia, and the Colli Piacentini.

The Barbera grape is an extremely durable and withstanding grape. It is used as a bulk grape and gets a lot of its attention from being blended. This grape produces a very rich, bold, and intense flavor at harvest which allows for it to be versatile and used freely with blending. It adapts well to any combinations because  of its high acidity and wonderfully strong fruit flavors, so it can be added in a small or large quantity. However, Barbera does not often make its way onto the label of the bottle or jug when it is combined, whether is it a trace amount or a hefty bunch.

An interesting event for this grape was when a group of the tome Piemonte producers joined together to try to produce a wine of the best Barberas made by combining all of their very best Barberas. They supervised the blend by the modernist Riccardo Cotarella. The elite group consisted of Braida, Chiarlo, Coppo, Prunotto, and Vietti.

Barbera is made to be consumed when young. Most Barberas are described as jammy with lots of berries and dark fruits. There are a few common wood descriptors such as vanilla, toasty, and oaky. They are often fizzy, light and usually sell at a decent price. Barbera is best paired with most cheeses, salmon, gamebirds, heavy pastas and seafood with heavier cream sauses, duck, goose and Italian sausage.

In the Primorski coastal region of Slovenia is the only wine region outside of Italy but within Europe that thoroughly enjoys Barbera as much as its own growing region. Outside of Europe,  there is a great appreciation for all things Italian and Barbera is amongst one of the grapes and items that has highly benefited from this fascination. California has dedicated a lot of grounds to the growth of the Barbera grape. Another area where Barbera has planted its hands has been in Argentina at the foot of the Andres in Mendoza and San Juan. The Barbera grape in Argentina keeps the high  acidity like those in Piemonte, but gains a much better harvest due to all of the sunshine. Austraila has begun to test their luck with the Barbera grape and have produced a few attention-grabbing wines.

Sources:

Drink This Now! 

Kevin Zraly's

http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/barbera.html

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