Barolo Culture

The wine is the culture

In Barolo the two are not separable, and the law is the right place to start because it is what everyone here organises their life around. Barolo must be 100% Nebbiolo. No other grape may go in. It must be aged at least 36 months after the harvest before release, of which at least 18 months must be in wood, and five years for a Riserva. DOC in 1966, DOCG in 1980.

The name Nebbiolo comes from nebbia, the autumn fog that fills these valleys — which is the single most evocative etymology in Italian wine and the reason the Langhe in October look the way the wine tastes.

The phrase the wine of kings, the king of wines is not marketing invented later: it comes from the wine's standing among the nobility of Turin and the ruling House of Savoy, in the period when the modern dry Barolo was created.

The museum

The WiMu in the Castello Comunale Falletti was designed by François Confino, and it is worth saying that this is an unusual museum: an interactive and deliberately emotional route through wine culture and tradition rather than a collection of presses and bottles. In a village of 750 people it is a surprisingly ambitious piece of cultural programming, and it is the best introduction to the region's wine that exists outside a cellar.

The landscape as culture

UNESCO inscribed these hills on 22 June 2014 as a cultural landscape, not a natural one — which is the correct category. What is protected is the result of centuries of human decisions about which slope to plant, how to train a vine, where to put a village and what to call the wine. The Langa of Barolo is one of three Langhe components of the inscription.

The table

This is tajarin country — the very fine egg pasta — with brasato al Barolo, the beef braised in the wine, as the dish the village is most associated with. Also vitello tonnato, the mountain cheeses, hazelnut desserts, and in the cold months bagna càuda. The cooking is rich because the wine is tannic; the two were developed together.