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Trying a new producer is sometimes a crapshoot; sometimes you like what’s in the bottle, and other times they just don’t. For this bottle of 2017 Cascina Valle Asinari, Nizza Barbera, it’s not that we weren’t not expecting to enjoy this wine, we just weren’t expecting it to be such a stunner.
Barbera is the most widely planted grape in Piedmont. These wines, like Beaujolais in Burgundy, are mass-produced; there are a lot of really good producers on the market, but there are also a lot of really bad producers. We can say with confidence that Cascina Valle Asinari is one of the good guys.
Cascina Valle Asinari aspires to produce the best Barbera in the world. Once we tell you a little more about the team behind this Piedmontese wine project, their vision will make sense.
Oscar Farinetti and Piero Bagnasco, the owners of Cascina Valle Asinari, are two of the most influential entrepreneurs in Italian wine. In addition to Cascina Valle Asinari, which is a newer addition to their portfolio, Farinetti and Bagnasco own Gruppo Fontanafredda, an esteemed collection of wine estates in Piedmont. Fontanafredda was named Wine Enthusiast’s “European Cellar of the Year” award in 2017.
If Oscar’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he founded the ever-popular Italian food lover’s paradise Eataly, a high-end Italian food market with dozens of locations around the world.
Cascina Valle Asinari was built around a legendary Piedmont winery, Bricco Asinari. This 20-hectare estate is located in San Marzano Oliveto, in the province of Asti, and grows primarily Barbera and Nebbiolo. Both of these grapes benefit from the gentle, hilly topography, which contributes to a microclimate that the grapes thrive on.
To preserve the quality of Italian agriculture, and by extension, Italian wine, Farinetti and Badnasco promote sustainability through a wine collective called Vino Libre, whose products are free from chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and whose sulfites are at least 40% below the legal limit.
You can read more about their mission statement here.
When wine lovers think of Piedmont, they most often think of Barolo (and the Nebiollo grape), and producers like Aldo Conterno, Bruno Giacosa, or Giuseppe Mascarello. And that’s largely because Barbera is considered an everyday food wine that is served almost as an afterthought to all of that wonderful Piedmontese food!
But well-made Barberas, like this one from Cascina Valle Asinari, deserve to be more than an afterthought.
Barbera grapes have been grown in Piedmont as far back as the 13th century. While the most highly regarded Barberas are produced in Alba, Monforte d’Alba, and some areas of Asti, the grape also has a prolific presence in Lombardy (where it is the most common grape), the Colli Piacentini, which is part of Emilia-Romagna, and Sardinia, where it’s known as Barbera Sarda.
Barberas are known for being acidic and tart-blackberry and dark cherry characteristics are often used to describe a Barbera wine’s flavor profile.
Production of Nizza wine is limited to 18 municipalities which are centered around Nizza Monferrato.
Nizza gained its own DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) status in 2014, and Barbera from Nizza is considered the best Barbera in Italy.
Among other things, Nizza production rules specify:
Vines in Nizza are planted on slopes facing either the southeast or the west, excluding the valleys. The soils in Nizza are typically calcareous and have sandy-clay marls and sandstones.
Italy
Piedmont / Asti / Nizza
Barbera
14.5
62–68°F / 16–20°C
Burgundy
1 Hour
Now to 2032
In the glass, the wine is an unforgettable ruby red. We picked up leather, graphite, clove, slate, plum and boysenberry on the nose. Other tasting notes also mention spicy red fruits and wild herbs.
The Cascina Valle Asinari Barbera from Nizza is a rich, sturdy wine with a dynamic palate. Plum, licorice, wet gravel, petrol, clove, leather, and black cherry were all present. The wine is on the drier side with gentle tannins and the pronounced acid that Barbera is known for.
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that 15% alcohol is a little higher than we usually like. But in the hands of this team, it didn’t come across as overpowering, or unnecessary.
This Barbera really over-delivered. We scored the wine an 85 overall, and at $45 a bottle, a 3.5/5 for the value.
If you take a look at the back of Cascina Valle Asinari bottles, you will see that the winery takes the idea of wine as a way to personally connect with friends, family, and even people you may not know well, pretty seriously. The company intentionally has no social media presence and no direct online presence. Instead, they prefer their customers to live in the moment and share those moments with friends.
“The intention of Cascina Valle Asinari is to restore wine to its central role, as something to be shared, to talk about, and to create harmony, because this is what wine is all about… making friends. Put me [the bottle] in the middle of the table and recapture the real social nature of wine. Talk, share, listen.”
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves…
