482: Lorenzo Accomasso and Barolo from the War Until Now

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[00:01:06] I'm Levi Dalton, and this is Ill Drink to That, where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Lorenzo Accomasso began helping his family in their vineyards in La Mora in the 1940s and still tends

[00:01:35] to his small parcels of vines there today. While most of the famous names of his generation have already passed on. Bruno Giacosa, Pepe Cola, Bartolo Mascarello, Giovanni Conterno, these people have left us. But Accomasso isn't just still alive, he's still making wine every year. And

[00:01:55] Accomasso describes himself as a member of the extreme wing of traditional Barolo producers, once telling me that he had never changed anything. He opts for long skin macerations for Nebbiolo, large Slavonian oak botti for aging Barolo, and prefers a long maturation before bottling.

[00:02:14] He typically releases wines into the market later than his neighbors, and some of his wines still see an elevage in Glass Demijohn, in keeping with the old custom of the region. Well before the pandemic, some friends and I sat with Lorenzo Accomasso in the humble room where

[00:02:32] he conducts tastings in his home. The meeting was recorded and you will hear it coming up. It was a visit, not an interview, and so it would be helpful to have some context for what Accomasso

[00:02:43] says on that tape, with an understanding of the events that have happened during his life. And so for that, we should head down to Abruzzo. Specifically to the Gran Sasso, the mountain in the Apennines with one of the highest peaks of Italy, and which, in September

[00:02:59] 1943, served as the site of the prison of the fascist Benito Mussolini. World War II had by this point gone very badly for Italy, and in July 1943, the Allies had both bombed Rome and invaded Sicily. In response, the King of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele III,

[00:03:21] the person who had originally named Mussolini the Prime Minister in 1922, stripped Mussolini of his powers in 1943 and had him arrested. In August of 43, Allied soldiers took control of Sicily and then started moving up the Italian

[00:03:38] peninsula, but the German infantry had already begun marching into Italy back in June when Mussolini had requested German reinforcements. With both Allied and German troops already inside his country, the King of Italy, who had been on the Allied side during World War I, declared an

[00:03:58] armistice with the Allied powers on September 8th of 1943, ending the Italian pact with Germany and the Axis. Hitler reacted quickly to this news. The next day, Nazi soldiers moved on Rome,

[00:04:14] prompting the King to flee that city for the south of Italy where the Allies were located at that time. The Germans began taking Italian troops prisoner, ultimately disarming close to a million Italian soldiers and sending many to internment camps. Then, on September 12th, German SS troopers

[00:04:33] landed gliders on the Gran Sasso mountain and moved on the isolated hotel where 200 Italian guards were holding Mussolini prisoner. The Germans convinced the Italians to stand down without firing a shot and Benito Mussolini, who had become the first fascist leader in Europe

[00:04:51] with his rise to power in the 1920s, was released. The Nazis would promptly install Mussolini as the head of their fascist puppet state in the north of Italy, the Italian Social Republic. The King

[00:05:04] of Italy, for his part, would declare war on Germany in October 1943 and this meant that the Italian people were in multiple wars on their territory simultaneously. A war of occupation

[00:05:18] and a civil war in addition to what at times had the feeling of a class war. Without a standing army any longer, the Italian resistance to the German occupation was waged as guerrilla warfare

[00:05:31] by partisans who hid in the mountains or on abandoned farms, often with the support of the surrounding civilian population. The partisans emerged from different backgrounds and espoused different political ideologies, with monarchists, socialists, and communists all involved in the

[00:05:49] resistance. Both the partisan attacks and the German reprisals were fierce. Enrico Martini, who led a group of ex-Italian soldiers that had escaped or avoided German internment, was a partisan leader in the north of Italy. As recounted by Don North in his book, Inappropriate Conduct,

[00:06:11] Enrico Martini received a communication in the summer of 1944 from another commander known as Dino. Dear Enrico, please send us shoes and leather if possible, having 80% of the men without shoes.

[00:06:26] In this condition you must understand I cannot move my men in the way I want to. The black robbers, and here Dino means the fascists who wore black clothing, have captured 30 women in Chiusa and

[00:06:40] have the intent of shooting them by the end of the day if we do not give up the hostages in our possession. The German commander wrote me that soon I will pay for all. Dino went on to say

[00:06:55] that the Germans were taking the family members of the partisans and placing them in danger. The Germans would estimate that 5,000 of their troops were killed by partisans in the summer of 1944 alone, with quite a bit more than that wounded. The German response was to kill 10

[00:07:12] Italians for every German death, whether those Italians be civilians or partisans, and it is surmised that as many as 15,000 Italian civilians were killed by the Germans at the time in addition to tens of thousands of partisans. Enrico Martini and others did manage for a short period to free

[00:07:34] a number of Italian cities in the north from the fascists, including the city of Alba in the Piemonte region. The Republic of Alba existed for 23 days in 1944 from October 10th to November 2nd before

[00:07:48] that city again fell to the fascists. Some of the memories of the 2,000 partisans who liberated Alba were recounted by Beppe Finolio, a former partisan himself, in his book The 23 Days of the City of Alba.

[00:08:03] This is also the period of time that Cesare Pavese would write about in his most famous novel, which is translated as The Moon and the Bonfires. Pavese, who was originally from the Asti region of the

[00:08:16] Piemonte, had written that every war is a civil war. In his novel, which is a real touchstone for that era, he described a Piemontese landscape that secretly held blood spilt in warfare, with partisans killing Germans as well as the Italian villagers suspected of betraying the resistance.

[00:08:36] The theme of a landscape concealing deaths is also reflected in the song Bella Ciao, an anthem of the anti-fascists, a song which is still sung on Liberation Day in Italy. That's the April holiday

[00:08:48] that commemorates the liberation of Italy by the Allies. In addition to the chorus Oh Bella Ciao, the song contains lyrics that could be translated as If I die as a partisan, then you must bury me,

[00:09:01] bury me up in the mountain, bury me up in the mountain under the shade of a beautiful flower, and all those who shall pass, and all those who shall pass will tell me what a beautiful flower. This is the flower of the partisan.

[00:09:35] About 200,000 partisans took part in the Italian resistance in total. In April of 1945, the Allies liberated Italy and Mussolini was captured by partisans as he was trying to flee the country. The partisans executed Mussolini by firing squad shortly afterwards, a couple of days

[00:09:55] prior to Hitler's suicide in Berlin. Fascists that were still inside Italy at that time, perhaps some 15,000 of them, were rapidly purged or killed. The participation of the socialists and the communists in the partisan resistance during the war was rewarded afterwards when both

[00:10:14] of those groups found a place in the government of the new Italian Republic, and that was a big turnaround for the communists who had been outlawed during fascist rule. The monarchists, like Enrico Martini for their part, were left out of the new picture and Vittorio Emanuele III,

[00:10:31] King of Italy, abdicated the throne in 1946. When I interviewed Pepe Cola, who would go on to own the Pronoto Winery, but who was still a teenager in 1945, he shared with me a distinct memory from

[00:10:46] the end of the war. This is what he told me, as translated by his daughter Federica. When the war ended, he was 15-16 years old and the most important

[00:11:18] willing he had was to be able to eat as much as he could of white bread, because the bread that was eaten during the war was so bad, but they were in such a small amount that the first

[00:11:30] thing he was thinking when he heard on the radio the war was finished, okay now I can eat as much as I want. Hunger was experienced by both the partisans and the civilian population at that

[00:11:42] time, and that reality is in the background of the stories about the war that Nicoletta Bocca of San Ferrolo was told by her father. He was a partisan during the Second World War and they were in the

[00:11:58] mountains in Cuneo. At a certain point the winter was very hard and they didn't have anything to eat in the mountains, and for this reason and also for a political reason they came down

[00:12:12] in the Lange. And there is this wonderful story told by my father of this traversata, traverse from Valgrana to Lange, they did it all in one night. It was in the middle of the winter,

[00:12:31] so high snow, and they could not even just, they slept just one hour because during the night was the best time to cross the plain. And then they arrived and was like, oh, l'abbondanza, they could eat even if it was war, in the cascine you can find eggs,

[00:12:52] taiari, it was magic for them. They had just eaten castagne sec for ages. And so they were in close relationship with the people that were living there. They were very supportive and the wine producer had the cellars and they used to hide the partisan in the cellars.

[00:13:17] And my father remembers, used to remember that at a certain point he was the father of Alden Giovanni Conterno Giacomo. His father used to have an osteria with a cellar and one night it seemed

[00:13:36] that the Germans were arriving. And so he said, okay, we cannot leave the wine in the hands of the German people. We go down and we drink everything before they arrive. And he used

[00:13:50] to remember with Bartolo Mascarello and said, do you remember when we were frightened by the Germans? Now they are our first clients and they come here. It's a second invasion,

[00:14:04] but now it's Pacific and they buy a lot of wines. But Martolo used to say, but I still feel that I I'm a little bit afraid because I have the memory when I hear the German voices,

[00:14:18] this way of speaking, I remember. Although the partisans were often supported by the local population, as Bocca spoke about, pasta and bread prices had risen dramatically within Italy for reasons that stretch back to Mussolini's rule as prime minister. Mussolini had launched what was

[00:14:39] known as the battle for grain in the 1920s, imposing tariffs on imported bread and fostering wheat production within Italy by encouraging mechanization, building new farms and draining the marshland near Rome known as the Pontine Marshes. In the 1930s, Mussolini moved thousands

[00:14:59] of families to the newly drained Pontine Marshes to work the new farms there. And that area became a center of wheat and cereal production within Italy, which it still is today. However, when the

[00:15:11] Nazis occupied Rome during the war, they reversed the water pumps at the Pontine Marshes and also broke the dikes there, allowing seawater to flood in. This meant that the area was useless for agriculture and it wasn't fully reclaimed until the 1950s. In the meantime, wheat for pasta and

[00:15:30] bread was scarce and this situation affected many people, including Lorenzo Accamazzo in his childhood. Another part of the shared cultural memory of Italians post-World War II is something Lorenzo Accamazzo recalls from later in his youth as people left the Italian countryside for cities

[00:15:50] or for other countries. This phenomenon, which involved frankly huge numbers of people, also had connections to an earlier era. The key to understand is that Italians leaving the countryside was a mass migration that occurred over many, many decades and that was actually interrupted

[00:16:09] by the fascists. Between 1880 and 1980, so 100 years, about 15 million Italians permanently left Italy, often going to North or South America in search of a better situation. That 15 million persons number amounts to the largest voluntary migration in documented history.

[00:16:31] There are reminders of this immigration in the culture and the language of Italy still today, as Gaia Gaia alluded to when I spoke with her. There is an expression in Italian, which is very difficult I think for people in the US to

[00:16:45] understand because it's a different culture, but I will try to say it. When you marry the right guy or the right girl, when you start a business and that business goes great, there is a way of saying in Italian. We say, wow, you're so lucky you discovered America.

[00:17:07] You don't have an idea of what America represents. America is something that doesn't even exist, exists only in the mind of Italian people. America is a land of hope, of a bright future, of opportunity. Everyone had an uncle or a relative that left Italy, went to America,

[00:17:24] whatever that was and made a better life. Notably, immigration out of Italy significantly declined during the World War I and World War II eras. There was a break in the flow out of

[00:17:38] Italy at those times because of the difficulty of travel during wartime as well as because of laws that were passed in Italy and in receiving countries like the United States. For example, as noted by Julie Thorpe in Population Politics in the Fascist Era, Mussolini's government in 1926

[00:17:57] declared all Italian passports held by Italians to be invalid and then introduced strict regulations about whom could obtain a new passport in an attempt to specifically prevent people from leaving the country. Mussolini also forbade the use of the term emigrant. On the one hand,

[00:18:17] migration that had been going on for decades was largely halted by the fascists and then it started right back up again after the war. On the other hand, several fascist policies contributed to the industrialization of Italy in the 20th century and the industrialization of Italy prompted people

[00:18:34] to leave the countryside. Specifically, the fascists began a government agency in the early 1930s to restructure private firms and to route public funds through them. That agency, often referred to as the IRI, provided support to banks and to industrial companies originally to help them

[00:18:54] through the Great Depression. But that same agency played a big role in the industrialization of Italy in the 1950s and the 1960s after the war, using government money to bankroll the national steel industry as well as the development of the national telephone network and the construction

[00:19:13] of a major highway connecting Naples with Florence, Rome, and Milan. The IRI, which wasn't disbanded until 2002, also had links to funding for companies like Fiat, Pirelli, and Olivetti. In addition to creating, in the form of the IRI, the engine that would later power the industrialization

[00:19:34] of Italy, the fascists also weakened trade unions which would not fully recover until the mid-1960s. So, in post-war Italy, there was a situation where loans to industry were both plentiful and inexpensive, labor was cheap, and regulation was pretty minimal. The result was, of course, explosive

[00:19:55] growth in the industrial sector. Italy was still largely agrarian in 1951 when agricultural employment still accounted for most of the jobs in that country, but rapid change happened soon after that. From 1958 to 1963, in what is known as Italy's economic miracle, the industrial growth

[00:20:15] rate was 8% each and every year. The result was that people left the countryside to find jobs. As Giacomo Odero, who lived during the war period, referred to in his interview. Keep in mind that Lamora is also the area in the Piemonte where Lorenzo Acamaso lives.

[00:20:39] When he was young, Lamora probably was more populated than it is today because with the years, many people, they left the country areas and they moved to larger cities. So he remembers then when he was a child, Lamora counted about 5,000 people living there. Now it's about 3,000.

[00:21:03] Further changes rapidly became apparent. In 1954, car ownership within Italy hit the million vehicle mark. In 1957, the first supermarket opened in Italy and in 1964, Ferrero introduced Nutella. By 1966, half of Italian families owned a television. Industrialization was taking a hold

[00:21:28] in the food and the culture of Italy. The ramifications were sometimes multi-layered. For example, Ferrero, based in Alba, made a fortune selling Nutella, an industrial product inspired by a local delicacy that had been invented during Napoleon's time. But Ferrero's

[00:21:46] policies of encouraging part-time employment and providing bus transportation to its workers helped keep family farms in the Piemonte intact as it allowed for people to work in Alba for some of the day and then return to work in their vineyards that same day. A similar duality held

[00:22:03] for two cultural commentators who utilized the new medium of television to bring attention to regional food products that were in danger of disappearing. Both of those people, Mario Sodati and Luigi Vernelli, also were refined styles of writing that fully encouraged the newly mobile

[00:22:21] city dwellers to get in their new cars and travel on the new highways to the countryside in search of distinctive food and wine. Anyone who got lost along the way could use the new phone system to

[00:22:33] call for directions or possibly to change their appointment. That is to say, the commentary of Sodati and Vernelli was in some ways made possible by the industrialization of Italy, although they both lamented the homogeneity and cultural erasure that industrialization brought along with it.

[00:22:53] Luigi Vernelli in particular had a large influence in Italy and an ability to inspire producers while also championing them. Certainly he had a big impact on Lorenzo Accomaso's life, as Accomaso often makes a point of noting. Events in the late 1960s had shown that something was again

[00:23:13] changing within Italy and Vernelli was able to channel that energy. In 1968 student protesters challenged traditional sources of power and then in 1969 several worker strikes and factory occupations were staged. Challenging authority was second nature to Vernelli, who had already

[00:23:33] had the experience of seeing his translation of the Marquis d'Assad burn in one of the last public book burnings in Italy. When it came to wine, Vernelli focused on several different initiatives

[00:23:46] that gave wine growers a sense of freedom to try new methods and also attached an importance to doing so. This was picked up on by Aldo Vaira of the Vaira winery who recalled that moment when I spoke with him.

[00:24:07] Gino Veronelli is a guy I don't remember to have ever seen with a tie. He was an anarchist, a philosopher. He was a person who had no doubts about what to choose between

[00:24:21] the farmer's wine and industrial wine. His very famous quote is that the worst farmer's wine is still better than the best industrial wine. So Gino Veronelli is like the catalyzer that brings together people. I'm thinking of the Pieropon, the Gravner from various regions. It's this new

[00:24:40] generation that is starting something different. Veronelli championed single crew wines and smaller yields amongst other initiatives and later in his career he advocated for barique use. It is important to realize that Veronelli was writing about food and wine from the 1960s through to his

[00:24:59] death in 2004 and that he had different enthusiasms at different times. I say this because when Lorenzo Accomasso says in the recording that Luigi Veronelli really supported him, Accomasso was talking about how Veronelli appreciated Accomasso's labeling of the wines by crew name and his approach to

[00:25:19] yields and green harvesting. Bariques were not something Accomasso embraced, but they also weren't embraced by Veronelli until the 1980s. This point can be confusing if you aren't aware of this because sometimes when an Italian producer says that they were supported by Veronelli,

[00:25:36] they mean for their use of French oak barique, but that's not the case for Accomasso. Coming up after the break, some big changes arrive and some of them don't feel so friendly. It was not easy

[00:25:51] time because it was a huge huge contrast in this moment against and honestly it was a moment of my life that I still have some something always on my stomach because it was not always a very

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[00:27:40] information. Danilo Nada of the Nada Fiorenzo winery summed up the change of generations in the Piemonte quite well when I interviewed him. Danilo, who is still a fairly young man today, spoke about the difference between the eras of his grandfather and of his father. If we think

[00:27:58] about the Langa today, it's a very beautiful region, highly rated, great wines, people live a very good life, but at the beginning of the last century it wasn't like that absolutely. The countryside life was quite hard. They didn't have a machine to make work instead of them, so

[00:28:19] the work was very hard. Life was very hard and many people tried to leave the countryside to go in the cities looking for a better life. And part of the family did that, but another part,

[00:28:33] as my grandfather Fiorenzo, they were very connected, very linked to the mother soil of Rambone, so they decided absolutely to stay there. We need to focus on how was the life when my grandfather started to make wine. So he was born in 1923 and he started to make wine

[00:28:54] alone just after the war, after he was imprisoned in Germany. At that time, as I told you before, the life was very hard. People were really poor, so they were more focused on survival than quality. And that's the reason why nobody thinks about the green harvest for example.

[00:29:16] It was something very, I would say, crazy for them. They just tried to produce as much as they can to live as best as they can. Finally, the revolution was in the late 70s, beginning, the first beginning of 80s when my father decided to stop at the winery.

[00:29:39] The life was changing in those years. People started to live better and they had a new idea of wine. My father, but also many other producers of his generation, they started to drink wine also from

[00:29:54] outside Piemonte. They have been in contact with great wine men of those years and they tried to start a quality work with the grapes. So first changing the barrels, starting to do the green

[00:30:11] harvest. And it was not that easy at the time. I remember my father always telling me that the first green harvest he did was in late 70s was something very funny because

[00:30:23] he was forced by my grandfather to pick all the grapes that he cut away and to throw away far from the vineyard. So in that way, nobody could see what my father did because for the

[00:30:37] religious people, the fruit you have on the vine is something that God is giving you. And if you cut away what God is giving you, you are a crazy man. But finally, my grandfather was born with

[00:30:52] that idea of vineyard, of winemaking. So the revolutionary soul of the estate was up to my father when he started working in the winery in late 70s, beginning of 80s. Danilo referred to the arguments over fruit ripeness and yields and there was a sort of compromise about this

[00:31:13] that was reached in the mid 1970s as Aldo Vacca of the Potatori del Barbaresco explained in his interview on this program. The 70s was in general tough in the area because a lot of rain, a lot of

[00:31:28] cold September. So a lot of underripe grapes year after year. And that's why people started to think an alternative to Barolo and Barbaresco and the idea of Lange Nebbiolo came up. Because honestly,

[00:31:44] you know, a lot of wineries, they just had a lot of grapes in their cellar that were not suited to make Barolo or to make Barbaresco. So, you know, let's make a younger wine. So Lange Nebbiolo started

[00:31:57] as a second label for Barolo and Barbaresco in the mid 70s. As an appellation, Lange Nebbiolo, you can add 15% of Barbera in the blend. Danilo Nara also made a comment about the revolutionary

[00:32:11] soul of his father in the 1970s and 1980s, and that was something that could be said of several wineries and people in Italy around that time. It's worth returning to Aldo Vaira for some perspective on this point because he belongs to the same generation as Danilo Nara's father.

[00:32:34] The major changes happen in the middle of the 80s. You can already see the signs, the buds of these changes earlier in the 70s. But it's only around the second half of the 80s that there is an explosion of a new generation.

[00:33:03] Here in Lange, I don't remember the exact moment, but I think it was the big tasting that was done at Domenico Clerico's house. It was the moment of perception of this change. And I think the moment when this change became evident was a big tasting organized at Domenico

[00:33:26] Clerico's house. Before the moment is only about historical names, historical wineries. You can name these as historical houses. From the middle of the 80s, there is a new generation in every village of the Barolo area. Probably these are also the fruits of the 1968 revolution.

[00:34:46] Go back to the family vineyards. I'm sure I'm forgetting many names, but it's a moment of something new, a new burning. And this is changing not just in the Lange, but all across Italy,

[00:34:57] Brunello, in the Chianti area. So it was a common beginning, but then with many different journeys. And everyone has a different interpretation or view of that first beginning and of wine. And I think when we start comparing Nebbiolo, when we start tasting the great wines of the world

[00:35:15] from Bordeaux, from California, Nebbiolo is this more delicate wine. And some of my colleagues almost have a complex for these wines. Someone even thinks of Anse Poggio Man, like co-planting different varietals to bring extra color and volume to Nebbiolo. It's the beginning of groups,

[00:35:37] people gathering in groups. One of these is what we call Barolo Boys. This is part of the beauty of the regions and of the designations. It's about the diverse identities of each one of us. Those are also the days when I stopped using barriques

[00:35:57] and I moved back to large casks for my Barolo. And for some years it's a challenge because the finesse of these wines I was making with large casks is almost misunderstood. Today, the journeys,

[00:36:12] the roads have realigned again. There's much more equity than what it used to be in the 80s and 90s. Sometimes I fear it's because we all grew older and perhaps we're all less rebellious and

[00:36:26] risk takers than what we used to. But no, eventually I say no, it's as if there was a wave that passed through and stretched things and now it's gone and everyone is back observing and

[00:36:39] enjoying the authenticity of our own grapes. What Aldo Vaira describes is a generation of the Piemonte that, perhaps inspired by the protests of 68 and 69 and then encouraged by Varanelli, goes on to make changes as they take control of the family wineries in the 1970s and 80s.

[00:37:01] But he also describes what happens next when those changes go even further, beyond the limits on yields that had been proposed, to the use of French oak barriques, shorter skin macerations, and implementing other grape varieties from outside the region. This is also around the time

[00:37:17] when Robert Parker was becoming increasingly influential amongst American collectors and when the Gambaro Rosso Guide began to be published in Italy. There was a sort of angry young man vibe to some of these changes which Aldo Vaira alluded to and which others have described

[00:37:36] as well, for example Michael Garner who wrote about the Piemonte in his book Barolo Tar and Roses. This is how Garner described it when I interviewed him. And then when we started researching the book

[00:37:50] which I think was probably around 1987, that was when it was all starting to bubble away and I don't know if Roberto Voeccio and his brother had built a wall down the middle of the cellar

[00:38:05] by then that they possibly had and Domenico Clerico had just arrived on the scene. We actually had a name for them, okay? We used to refer to them as the Rabid Afri and this is simply because quite a few of them had perms, Afro hairstyles. Clerico and both

[00:38:29] were Alfredo Roana as well. So and they were pretty kind of angry young men so we refer to that group as the Rabid Afri which sounds Italian but it's just a sort of a silly

[00:38:41] word we put together so it meant sort of angry young men with Afro hairstyles. In addition to Michael Garner and Aldo Vaira, another person who noted the angry young man vibe in the Piemonte around that time was writer Victor Hazan. Hazan, who I interviewed for this program,

[00:38:59] was very direct in his appraisal of Elio Altari who was then one of the new wave of wine producers. Altari was a terrorist. When Altari's father made wine they had a vineyard and Altari hated

[00:39:18] those old barrels that his father kept putting wine into and one day he took a chainsaw and he went into the cellar and he cut them all up. That was his character. Hazan, in the same

[00:39:32] interview, explained that while in his opinion Elio Altari was a talented maker of fine wines, the Altari wines didn't really have the character of a Barolo. The changes in technique had changed

[00:39:45] the identity of the wines in Hazan's view and this gets to the heart of what could be termed a critique of the modern wines of the Piemonte. A producer who very explicitly made this point

[00:39:58] was Barolo Mascarello and while he has since passed away, his daughter Maria Teresa Mascarello continues in the same tradition today. Here is how she explained it when I interviewed her for this program. In the past my father for example thinks that with her generation was all finished

[00:40:18] because the young people leave the landscape, the vineyard to look for work in the city in Alba to Ferrero, Miroglio or in Turin to Fiat. But born the opportunity to stay that a new generation

[00:40:43] don't leave the village, don't leave the region but come back. This was very very important for us. I appreciated that the people stay, they don't leave but certainly I don't share the decision to change the identity of the wine because certainly in this time, eight years, nine years

[00:41:07] more, the trend is wine and certainly the model is Bordeaux style that barrique, roto fermenter, concentration, high alcohol, dark color not very typical of Barolo. I appreciated that the people stay but I don't share this choice to leave the past,

[00:41:37] to leave the identity of the region for following a market style. For me Barolo is like a classic book, like Dante, like Manzoni. I don't change the classical every time because the market ask different taste, different style. The so-called modern producers were associated with bringing

[00:42:10] techniques from outside the region to bear on their wines inspired by wines from other countries and while it is true that people like Beppe Cola had been regularly tasting wines from France several decades earlier, it was the modern producers who were really associated with

[00:42:27] drinking wines from elsewhere as this comment from Luca Corrado of Vieri alludes to. People like Saltare, Scavino, Sandron, all these people, Domenico Clerico, they were probably the first generation that they really loved to drink other wine because it was very unusual

[00:42:50] that they were drinking not Barolo, you know, what they were drinking Burgundy or Bordeaux or Riesling or other wine, you know, very few people they did. But a key thing to realize is that during this period it wasn't like modern and traditional producers co-existed and everything was

[00:43:09] fine and dandy and everybody was pals and giving out high fives to each other. No, there was some acrimony during that era when the modern producers were in the ascendant and when the modern wines

[00:43:20] were praised for having more body and for being cleaner. The modern wines were dominant in the market and traditional producers were sometimes ridiculed for making wines that were termed dirty. Here is Luca Corrado again on this point. We have to put ourselves in that moment. In that

[00:43:39] moment there was a lot of big contrast between more traditional producer and more modern producer. I think, you know, many of you probably saw the movie also Barolo Boys. That was the moment

[00:43:54] where, you know, a lot of very, very good growers that now they make fantastic wine, they used to sell the grape to big winery like Fontana Freda or Marchese di Barolo that was called at the time

[00:44:08] differently Piocesare and so on, big estate. And they realized, wow, we have this great vineyard, why don't we make some wine? And they understood that if they wanted to become famous, they had

[00:44:25] to work better in the vineyard. And this was a great electricity for the region because it gave a lot of energy to the region. But their philosophy was a little bit more to make more modern style

[00:44:36] Barolo, you know, more darker Barolo, more fruity, more drinkable, younger, more oaky. And it was not easy time because it was a huge, huge contrast in this moment against... And honestly, it was a moment of my life that I still have some something always on my stomach,

[00:45:00] eternally, because it was not always a very polite moment, you know. It was really... I remember one time, one producer that he made an interview to the counter, I think so, and he said that making a traditional wine is an excuse to make wine that stink.

[00:45:21] And so it was really big conflict. I remember it was a moment here in New York, we were working with Lauber, and Lauber was representing us and Monfortino, Roberto Contero. And they were doing closeout of Monfortino, I remember. Or Bartolo Mascarella, I remember closeout in California

[00:45:44] that I had a friend that he bought, all was available, you know. You can imagine a closeout right now on this wine is crazy, but it was like this. It was a period of stark contrasts and of

[00:45:57] different winemaking camps, as has been referred to. And it is worth hearing from someone who was young and coming up in wine right at that time, someone like Federico Scarzello of the Scarzello Winery in Barolo. It's really interesting to talk to a Barolo producer that essentially got started

[00:46:14] in 2000-2001 because that's kind of at the end of the modern popularity, the idea of modern Barolo boys kind of popularity. I have to imagine that I was in the middle of that. My

[00:46:28] generation is the right generation in the middle. I'm born in 80. I started in a logical school in 94, was the total parable of the modern producer. Like that was the height of it. Sure. The famous

[00:46:44] important one was all modern. I was curious too. Of course I was curious. I had the beautiful opportunity to know personally many of the great and famous producer, the classic one too, because my father has more connection with the classic and the traditional one.

[00:47:07] I had the opportunity to meet people like Giovanni Conterno, for example. And to be honest, they was very fascinating man because they had the responsibility of the Barolo. I think the sensation was those men are, they create one wine and not just for the market,

[00:47:30] not just for money, not just for that. And this was a good and nice philosophy. Then another thing that pushed me to be classic. I don't love traditional, but classic of course was my father.

[00:47:47] My father had the old school of Barolo and for him, new wood was a disaster in cellar, change the bottle was very, very bad way. So the old bottle was perfect. The responsibility of the Barolo. When you think about it, that's a lot to say about Savon,

[00:48:08] that this individual was carrying the weight of the entire region on their shoulders by pursuing a kind of winemaking that wasn't popular. It's worth underlining here that the person being referred to is Giovanni Conterno whose family had given shelter and wine to the partisans,

[00:48:27] as we heard earlier, and whose wines were being closed out and were hard to sell during the time period. We are now discussing the mid 1990s. And when you understand that the same family that

[00:48:38] didn't want their wine to be drunk by the Nazis also didn't want to change their wine style for the foreign market. Well, that makes sense. And here we could bring in the famous political and winemaking statement made by Barolo Mascarello, no barique, no Berlusconi. Berlusconi was the first

[00:48:58] post-war prime minister in Italy to put neo-fascists in his cabinet, something he did in the mid 1990s. Barolo was saying basically, I didn't change who I was back during the war

[00:49:10] when I was helping to hide partisans and it could have cost me my life. And I'm for sure not changing now even if powerful people are against that. That's quite a statement, right? But I want to be

[00:49:23] clear here. That isn't a statement that Lorenzo Acamaso makes. While Acamaso expresses a lot of admiration for Barolo and Maria Teresa Mascarello as well as for other traditionalists like Marta Rinaldi, I have never heard him make the kind of political statement that some of the other

[00:49:40] traditionalists, especially those that lived through the war like he did, have made. Instead, he is much more even keel about it and he states that Barolo should have a certain character

[00:49:51] but that everybody should make their wine the way they want. And if you want to drink as a consumer a Barolo earlier in the first few years after release, then you should drink a modern wine.

[00:50:02] If you want to drink a wine that will age for many years, then Lorenzo Acamaso suggests it be a traditional wine. And that's it. That's as political as he gets about the subject. He feels that the

[00:50:14] traditional wines can age. Those are the wines that he was taught to make, that he has kept making, and that his customers come to him to buy. And that's really the entirety of it. It's important to say

[00:50:29] this because if you want to really understand this arch-traditionalist who has maintained for all these years, you also have to understand that Acamaso is friendly with Roberto Vuercio, one of those angry young men that was mentioned earlier. Vuercio and Acamaso have been friends since

[00:50:45] Vuercio was in his 20s and it's pretty amazing to think that Vuercio would want to build a wall in his own family cellar to separate his wines from the more traditional, but then that he would

[00:50:56] seek out the friendship of the old traditionalists in the village. But that's what happened. Acamaso, I should add, was the longtime president of the association of growers that runs the Cantina Comunale di Lamora, a shop in the village where you can find wines from the different producers

[00:51:13] working in Lamora. And this means that Acamaso was involved with the promotion of all the different producers of Lamora, many of whom worked in a more modern style then and still do today. So what I'm

[00:51:26] telling you is that if you have an idea of a firm old traditionalist waving his fists at the tractors of the passing modernistas, the person that you have in mind then is not Lorenzo Acamaso.

[00:51:40] At any rate, with the arrival of the next century there was about to be a further change in store for the wines of the Piemonte. At the beginning of 2005-2006 there was a big change in the wine

[00:51:55] taste and people started to have traditional wines and to stop a little bit to drink the modern ones. That's Martina Barozio, who was working at Scarpa Winery when I interviewed her. As she says, the buying market shifted around 2005 and 2006 and that's a really interesting time for a shift

[00:52:16] because it coincides with when the wines from the highly scored 2000 vintage, a really ripe year, had entered the market for purchase and drinking. And people who had tried those wines and also the 1997s, which another ripe year, were asking questions about how ripe was maybe too ripe.

[00:52:34] It turned out that the modernists had opted for riper wines at the same time that climate change was raising temperatures and bringing more ripe fruit along with it. And here is how Aldo Vaca

[00:52:46] described the changing conditions. In the old days we had vintages that were unripe and so bad or vintages that were just ripe. Now we have vintages which are ripe or super ripe. It's a dramatic change in the climatic pattern, which consequently changing the vineyard management

[00:53:08] and in the vinifications. I remember the days when everything was done in the vineyards to expose the grapes to the sun as much as possible. And now all of a sudden it's not that important

[00:53:19] anymore. You can leave some extra leaves around the grapes because we actually need some shade. And then our green harvest still very important but not dramatically important like it was in the 90s

[00:53:32] because even a couple of extra grapes can ripen more easily. When did you first start to realize that when did it first dawn on you that the climate was changing? 97 was the first year. Of course we

[00:53:43] didn't realize at that point it just seemed an unusually warm and ripe vintage very easy to drink 97. Then I remember the 2000 was another vintage like that 2003 super hot even almost too hot. In hindsight it is clear that the intense popularity of the modern style coincided with

[00:54:04] when the climate was decidedly changing. Pepe Cola for instance divided the history of Barolo into the period before the 1990s and then the period from the 1990s. And he isn't the only one

[00:54:19] to see the 1990s as the key change period for the wines. For example here is what Angelo Gaia told me on that same topic. Till the mid 90s weather in our region was quite often during a harvest time

[00:54:39] a lot of rain and the rain were damaging less or more the grapes so quality was unpredictable not not easy. I remember that normally in the 60s decade in the 70s decade

[00:54:54] in 80s decade the bad vintages were three four out of ten. Today after that we are living in a time that probably there is a variation in weather today that I don't know if I can

[00:55:10] talk about the climate change but something is modifying in the weather in the vineyard the consequences are different. So today that we have a much more dry and hot summer time

[00:55:24] and during autumn is not raining like it was used in the past there is a much more opportunity of producing grapes of a certain level of quality and the consistency and repeating the quality.

[00:55:37] So this is a good aspect of what is happening now with climate change. There is even a less good aspect and it means that parasites are becoming more aggressive the growing season starts earlier the harvest time starts earlier and quite often there is an increase of sugar in

[00:55:58] the grapes and the increase of alcohol. The idea that quality has become more predictable now that the vintages are less variable has driven investment in the Barolo region and increased the planting of Nebbiolo vineyards there. Areas that were not planted the vines for decades if ever

[00:56:17] are now covered in them and old timers like Lorenzo Accomasso have noticed that difference. As an illustration of this point this is the observation that Umberto Focassi Ratti Mentone shared with me when I spoke with him. You know this increase of production of the wine in this area

[00:56:38] is only from the last 20 years because I remember when I was a child from La Mora you were looking down it was like a forest we had some small piece of vineyard somewhere but now it's all vineyards

[00:56:52] because wine it was discovered and Barolo was in fashion. When I came here the production of Barolo was six million bottles now it's nearly close to 13 million bottles doubled. Someone who hasn't grown his vineyard size is Lorenzo Accomasso who still owns a bit over

[00:57:12] three hectares of vineyards today and is still primarily known for his wines from the Roque de la Nunciata MGA but there have been changes all around Accomasso as Barolo has become a wine

[00:57:24] that is drunk throughout the world and the area where it is made has become a destination for tourists. This shift is something that Maria Teresa Mascarello commented on in her interview. I was born in 1967 and in these 50 years a lot has changed also for me because

[00:57:45] I remember where I was born in Barolo was a very farmer village. There are only two restaurants and with rooms and we are young and we play all the time in the village no car. It's a very

[00:58:05] more simple life. I remember the door stay with the key inside also in the night we don't leave the key. The car stay outside with the key inside was very different and there is the shop,

[00:58:24] the bakery, the butcher, no wine shops. Barolo was a farmer village now is a touristic village that only one shop certainly the wineries are the same that in the past but certainly for me

[00:58:48] is very changed the village. Also I don't use to go in the village and to meet international people before I met only my compaesani, the abitanti of Barolo. Now is like Capri, it's like a famous village in the world. It is telling that Lorenzo Accomaso's

[00:59:18] wines are now more in demand than they have ever been as people who yearn for a glimpse of how Barolo used to be make a path to his door. It's not enough to make great wine you also have to

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[01:00:29] Offset is focused on the wine industry and can embrace the nuanced needs of your wine brand. It has to be said that we've done miracles here in 20 years. We were so behind. I remember when

[01:01:23] we used to go out to restaurants, talking about the 1960s around 1965. Later I stopped going out because I received food poisoning. Anyway, I remember we were ordering a couple of bottles from the wine list and then we were sneaking our own bottles of Barolo from under the table.

[01:01:40] You have to consider that until the 1970s nobody was drinking wines from this area in the restaurants here. Everybody used to order wines from the south of Italy and they were heavy wines back then. Now those have changed too. Il Belvedere, La Mora and Demetrio in Bosalasco.

[01:02:06] In the period of the 1960s and 1970s there were two better known restaurants, Il Belvedere in La Mora and Demetrio in Bosalasco. Demetrio was originally from Inuziata. He was hardly serving any wine from here. Barolo bottles were so full of sediment. The rare times Barolo

[01:02:24] was served it was for military men. Anyway, there's still a long way to go even today. Here there is not at all the sense of team spirit and I know what I'm talking about because I've

[01:02:35] been president here in La Mora of the Associazione Vini della Mora for 23 years and I know I won't be elected again. There should be a change in the way of thinking.

[01:02:54] If I don't have a net, they give me four barriques, marked, cut, a piece of land, a thousand meters of land. We don't necessarily have to copy France but you know there you have vineyards in which you can

[01:03:12] produce four barriques maximum. They're little pieces of land, 1,000 meters, very often with half of the yields and double the price. I would have loved to see this approach here but you can't

[01:03:24] even put it on the table to the other growers. To think that way you need teamwork and everybody to understand that the recognition of a few can benefit everyone in the region, even though not

[01:03:34] everybody is lucky enough to have inherited or bought vineyards in the great sites. In 30 years the production of the region almost has doubled. There isn't much else to plant. In La Mora I don't

[01:03:46] see a spot where I could plant more. In La Mora we have about 30 sub-regions and around 10 can be considered great vineyards. The others are good but it is not the same. For the great ones we're talking

[01:03:59] about Roque, Dell'Annunziata, Bernate, Cherequio, Lacera and a few others. It's a difficult theme to discuss and it's easy to get yourself enemies pushing these kinds of conversations. I haven't tried to do that

[01:04:13] in my years as president. We are 70 associates and to make them all agree on something is hard, especially in the world of wine. In this world you don't really have friends, it's already something to not have enemies. It's difficult. Let's hope that the new generations will know.

[01:04:34] There will always be rivalries. Let's hope the new generations will be better, but I'm afraid there will always be rivalries. Everybody wants to say my wine is the best. I'm one of the few who has never said that.

[01:04:52] It's for the people drinking it to say. Then I know as well that I make difficult wines. You know there are people liking Blondes and people liking Bernettes. I used to like both Blondes and Bernettes. The world is beautiful for this too.

[01:05:23] I was going dancing for 25 years. I had a thing for Blondes, but then the most beautiful girlfriends I had were Bernettes. Wine is not that different. I have great respect for guides and journalists,

[01:05:39] but at the end the difference is made by the consumer. You can't be loved by everyone. But I'm out of the game. It is up to your generation. I chose my path. I believe that wine is made in the vineyard, then in the cantina you only guide it.

[01:06:16] But if you don't start from the land, you can't start well. And you know, you have to be lucky to have a nice piece of land which is making good wines. We make wine in the vineyard. Without a good exposure there's no point. Then the key things

[01:06:29] are a few pruning short, which means leaving seven to eight buds to have yields of six tons per hectare of fruit maximum. But the base is the soil, then the vine and its management. In the cellar everyone

[01:06:42] does things as they fancy. You have to respect what someone else is doing. Do what you want without looking around at the others. We used to do everything within the family. My dad,

[01:07:03] he was a hard one. My mother, she was as strong as a man. She lived to 97 years old and at 92 she was still down there cleaning the bottles. My dad passed away much younger at 65 years old from

[01:07:16] cancer. My sister used to work here and she was very meticulous in everything she did. You know, we've always done everything by hand. If she wasn't happy with the label not being perfectly

[01:07:26] straight or if the level of the wine wasn't right, she put the bottle aside. You know, I still do some bottling by hand. Now here in the Barolo area you can't complain. This work lets you live well, or at least you

[01:08:02] don't live badly, let's say. Surely talking about Barolo I don't really understand these prices. What's the logic? The range of prices is very wide, up to some crazy levels. I mean it's always

[01:08:16] Barolo, it's always wine that you get. I don't know. I wouldn't be capable to sell wine for high prices. I wouldn't get far if I had to tell someone here this bottle's value is 50 euros.

[01:08:28] I couldn't do it. I would never be bold enough to do it. There are people who can and then there are also Barolos sold for 10 euros with all the DOCG labels and everything. You know,

[01:08:39] if they have those it means they're not bad. Yes, maybe with some aging they fall apart. Anyway, everyone sets prices based on what they believe. You know there are people who've been coming to visit me for 40 years. The grandfathers used to come, now the grandchildren are coming.

[01:08:58] They're friends. I have to consider it when pricing the bottles. I see it as a positive that many young people come to visit me. I see it as a positive that many people who do not have a

[01:09:08] background in farming but are from some other field come to visit me. I sell Barbera for slightly higher prices, but it's also a Barbera that I've aged myself for five years you know. Anyway, I wouldn't be a good salesperson.

[01:09:40] I have 56 harvests on my shoulders. I've never gone around to ask people to buy my wines. I never dared to do that. Now the traditional style is back on trend. 10 years ago nobody wanted to hear about it. We were all done, that's it.

[01:10:10] I used to be the president of an association. I could never talk. In Lamora, the two of the old school were myself and Maccarini. 40 to 50 days of vinification and so on. It was few people, very few.

[01:10:40] Now there's basically no one talking about a modern style, but a few years ago it was all the time about barriques. Now you also hear around the same big barrique fans are buying some big botti, almost under the table.

[01:11:12] You know it's difficult to use barrique in a way with the strong stylistic influence that they give and then turn back. It's difficult to go back. But then I heard now they keep their barriques for

[01:11:23] longer, eight years not just for three years like before. But let's be honest if the land is more expensive now we also have to say thank you to the people who used barrique because these land prices

[01:11:34] are something new. I myself tried to age some dolcetto on barriques that were seven to eight years old but I don't do it anymore because it's boring to work with barrique. However that wine was still pretty good.

[01:11:57] Anyway there was a time in which the more traditional producers were not at all successful. You have to consider also that those producers were all very small. I make only about 10,000 bottles each year. I've never been out traveling to sell or promote the wine. I've never participated

[01:12:14] in a wine fair, never been to Verona, never even been to a tasting in Alba, nothing. However people come to visit me and you know Veronelli really supported me. I was the first to start a vineyard.

[01:12:36] At that time my father was still in full force and I had all the vineyards because it was that decade of 60s, 70s. You know not to promote myself but already in 62 I was doing green harvest.

[01:12:53] I believe in green harvesting. I was the first. Back then my dad was still around and fully in charge but I was responsible for the vineyards. During that decade 1960 to 70 people were offering

[01:13:06] you vineyards to buy. There was no one who wanted to work the land anymore. I stayed and I arrived to make Nebbiolo. People used to put anything in the harvest boxes, green bunches, whatever. My dad

[01:13:19] and I were sorting and hiding that from anyone who could see it. Now it is the opposite. We don't hide the sorting. But as I was saying, one can't really come back now and reconsider their style.

[01:13:32] You can't start making half modern and half traditional style wines. You'd lose credibility. Now they are using barriques until eight years. Back in time it was a maximum four years for the modern producers. From what I understand with French oak the more years the barrel have the

[01:13:59] more you find the influence of the oak in the wine. If you used French barrique for 15 years old it would still leave that unpleasant taste. It's not like Slavonian oak. I don't know exactly the

[01:14:10] specifics about why. I have four or five Botti which are 35 years old, not just 10 to 12 years old. You don't taste wood. Now we are all traditionalists, you know. Many people are talking more in that

[01:14:24] direction. But I'm the extreme wing of the traditionalists. I don't filter, I don't fine. I do 40 to 50 days of maceration for Nebbiolo. Two to three rackings in total. That's it. I've always worked organically. You can use so much sulfur in organic wines that everyone can be

[01:15:07] organic. They give an SO2 limit in the wine of 80 to 90 milligrams per liter. I no longer use just sulfur and copper for treatments. I use copper sulfate but I've done some treatments with other

[01:15:20] products. With the very high humidity and other factors you need to, you know. In 1975, 1976 and 1977 for those three years in a row I wasn't even covering the expenses of the year. Now if I had

[01:15:34] three years like that I'm not sure I could make it. It can be challenging. The new clones are less resistant to mildew. I need to spray more often. Back in time there were three types of Nebbiolo available. Maquette, Lampia and Rosé, period.

[01:16:24] Now you go to the nursery and they almost show you a catalog. There are six types of Lampia, five to six types of Maquette that they now offer, and the one from Val d'Aosta, the Picotenner. I've never tried it. Just the Rosé is a bit left behind.

[01:16:40] It's anyway a type of Nebbiolo which I'm not sure about. I've never been crazy for it. I had one ton and a half of Rosé. It was approachable right away as a wine. All the old vines that I have are

[01:16:52] Lampia. I planted some Maquette. The first harvest was 2012 but I've not fallen in love with it. It gives a different wine. My vineyards Rochete and Roque are both in Roque de la Nunciada but they're distant, 500 meters or more apart from each other. Rochete is the traditional name

[01:17:12] for the parcel. It faces Barolo. It gets a lot of sun. It's a very warm site. Roque instead looks at Castiglione Folletto. It gets one and a half hours less sun per day. It's a darker wine. Roque

[01:17:25] is more structured, more of a Barolo. Rochete is a particular wine, period. It is fine, elegant, and more perfumed than Roque. It is a pleasure to vinify in some years and has made me very proud

[01:17:38] in some years. It's a unique vineyard. It is totally in the sun. I harvest the grapes only early in the morning because after lunch there is that warmth. Rochete has sun for the entire day.

[01:17:50] What can I say about Rochete? I like it. In a half hectare you have four different soil types. The 93 Rochete and the 90 Rochete for me, together with the 71 Rochete, well, the 71 is unique.

[01:18:14] Let's leave it aside. The 71 Rochete is harvested on November 1st or 2nd. It's the best wine I have. It has more structure than the Roque. It is never really that structured but in the vintages in which it is, like 1993, 1990, you know 1990 for me together with the 1971.

[01:18:35] No, let's leave 1971 aside because it is unique. In 1971 I harvested on November 1st and 2nd and it is the best wine I've tasted from among the wines made in this house. Then there is 1990 which had everything. It had the poetry. I loved it. Such a beautiful wine.

[01:19:11] 1990 was an exceptional wine. You just make wine like that once or twice in a lifetime. In fact, I have three Barolo. The Rochete, the Roque and then the other one next to the house,

[01:19:23] L'Ami Vigna, a name which I can't write on the label anymore. There are now rules about labeling something as Vigna but I have had the vineyard for over 50 years. I labeled it as a single vineyard and was also very supported by Veronelli in doing so.

[01:19:53] I had a good relationship with Veronelli as a journalist. He used to come and visit me. He loved these kind of wines, grower's wines as I like to call them. He died too young. He told

[01:20:13] me he would write his last book at 90 years old but he was gone at 75 years of age if I'm not wrong. L'Ami Vigna is a vineyard on the border with Roque del Anunziata. There's just the road in between but it is in Anunziata not Roque del Anunziata.

[01:20:49] They say that 2010 is a good year but I have never experienced it. 2001 was a good year, it was elegant. 2004 was a good year, the structure was good. 2005 was also a good year. 2006 was not bad, 2007 I like it.

[01:21:27] Of the past vintages 2001 has been one of the best in recent decades in terms of elegance. 2004 and I'm always talking about my wines not the wines of other producers. 2004 has been the best of that decade. They say 2010 is really good but 2001 was really lucky,

[01:21:46] just an elegance. 2004 has structure instead, it has a bit of everything. It's a beautiful wine. 2005 is also a good wine. People like the 2005. It's a wine which gave some surprises. 2006 is not bad, 2007 I like. I didn't go crazy for it at first, it was so-so.

[01:22:06] Now I like 2007 better. I like it period. For me 2005 is the best. I had a wine which was as good as 2005. Now I like it better. Maybe I'm wrong because it makes so many changes. After a lifetime you always find incredible surprises.

[01:23:05] Sometimes you don't have much faith. You say, but there can be a product, even 2005, it's not that I was in love with 2005. Instead it turned out well. You know I've had quite a full life. 2007 it's like one of those women who you don't go crazy

[01:23:27] for straight away but then after hanging out and knowing each other you change your mind. Not that I hated it but I used to find it quite similar to 2005. The same level of quality but

[01:23:37] now I like it better. Then it's also changing a lot through time so maybe I will change my mind again. Even after a long life you always find new surprises. It's incredible. Sometimes you're not

[01:23:48] very hopeful for a vintage but then somehow a good product comes out. I think already at harvest you could feel that it was one step better than 2005. In 2005 the Roque wasn't bad, but it didn't have that great structure. 2008 is so-so, not as good as 2007. A wine that people

[01:24:07] will like probably. 2009 has a never-ending alcohol. It is 15 and a half percent. 2009 wasn't a great success. The 2012 felt more complete than 2011, more structured. Maybe 2011 is cuter with more

[01:24:30] sex appeal but the 2012 I like it better. You see when I don't go crazy for some of my wines I say so rather than telling a lot of stories instead. 2013 was good but tricky. About 2015 I have the

[01:24:47] inspiration that it might be like 1990. In 2016 the soil was very dry. I'd never seen it so dry. There were fissures on the ground. I was born in the upper European countries. I was 7, 15, 18 years old. I happened to go to a friend's

[01:25:33] house to eat a hare and he brought six bottles. Thank goodness I had three or four on my car. We went back in time. It was 1962, I remember the year. Everything was fine.

[01:25:52] If you want to hear it, it's from the vineyard where it was born. The scent of that vineyard, you don't have to go over 20 years. You know you have to prove wines, tasting them with 6 to 10 years of aging.

[01:26:14] I always tell my clients that wines from medium quality harvest should be drunk within 5 to 10 years. Superior vintages should be drunk after 7 to 15 years, 18 maybe. I believe that if you want

[01:26:26] to taste the vineyard where the wine comes from and the perfumes of that site, I think you shouldn't wait longer than 30 years. I used to brew a bottle of 93. There were 10 bottles of that wine. Sometimes I would brew

[01:26:41] 10 or 12 bottles to get rid of my whims. 93 was a medium-low vintage. I was always called from Switzerland or Germany. They said they didn't have it, but I said I wanted to try it. I tried it and I found it to be a nice wine, fresh. It smelled good.

[01:27:10] You have to drink it at the right time. The other day I opened a bottle of 1993. I opened 10 bottles. I was curious because 1993 wasn't considered a great vintage. But I received a call from some clients from Switzerland or

[01:27:27] Germany saying that it wasn't at all bad. So I thought I would try some. It is a wine which is still good, fresh. Anyway, you have to drink wine when it's time.

[01:27:39] 50 years ago, those who were my age now said that the wine should be good at 5 years, not at 1 year. If it's good at that age, you can't go far. There was also Conterno who always told me that. He was a strange person.

[01:28:00] He said to me, my father, that if the wine was already good at that age, he would do an analysis. There are also high pH wines. 2003 was born with a very high pH. He was already good at 2 years old.

[01:28:29] 2000 is a wine with high pH. 50 years ago, older people used to say that good wines are not good before 5 years of aging. Because if it is good straight away, it won't live so long. Aldo Conterno used to always tell me that. He was such a nice person.

[01:28:45] He used to tell me that if Barolo was good from the very beginning, it is not a good sign. You know, at that time, they didn't even do analysis. But very often those wines had high pH.

[01:28:55] It is the case with 2003. It was good after 2 years. Good to drink straight away. The wine from 1982 started to be good just a few years ago. It was 3.20 pH at mallow completion. You can age that wine for 50 years without a problem. I like the 1982, the 1989, the 1990.

[01:29:18] For aging, the 1989 maybe will age longer than the 1990. But the 1990 had everything. In 1974, I did not add sulfur. It was 30 total. When you take away the sulfur, something nasty can come up later. But still, 1974 was one of my favorites.

[01:29:38] For me, it is a pleasure to make Barolo. Dolcetto instead makes you go crazy sometimes. Dolcetto turns to the dark though. You can get the color, but before May, you have already racked it 3 times. It has happened that I get everything ready for bottling.

[01:29:54] With a perfect wine, clean I mean, perfect in its way. My Dolcetto comes from vines over 45 years old. The wine really tastes of the grapes. Anyway, it has happened that I had everything ready for bottling. And then it needed to be racked again.

[01:30:15] One day you taste it and it is clean from reduction. And the next day it is a little stinky. Dolcetto is the most difficult grape. In 2006, I had to wait 15 degrees. I still have all the wines that I kept there. I did not have a hectare of Dolcetto.

[01:30:39] I had more than 30 quintals. I kept it for 20 days on the vineyards. Then I had to take it away. It was always 5 or 6 grams of sugar. I did not add any yeast. After 7 days, it did not move. I gave away the other 50 quintals. So I kept it there.

[01:31:12] After 7 days, it did not move. After 8 days, it broke the bottle. It gave a blow. In 56 vintages, I have never had a Barolo that drove me crazy. But Dolcetto, yes. The 2006 Dolcetto was 15% alcohol by volume. I still have 2 or 3 Demijohns that I keep.

[01:31:40] I have one hectare of Dolcetto. I kept it 20 days on skins in 2006. Then it was time to rack it. The following year, I gave it some time on the skins of the 2007. Still nothing. I gave half of the wine away.

[01:32:05] The other half I decided to give some time on the skins of the 2008. It finished fermentation with great vigor. It was also pretty good. I still did not know if I would find someone who would buy it. It had such full body.

[01:32:26] I had never done a Dolcetto like that. I wasted half of it by giving it away. But the other half of it was alright. I drink Dolcetto. This is the wine that I drink at my home. The 2006 Dolcetto is still really nice.

[01:32:46] For sure, that year, the Dolcetto drove me crazy. I feel like someone still different than everyone else. I feel everyone has to stay in their own garden and I stay in mine. Eventually, we cannot complain.

[01:33:50] In 2014, I visited Lorenzo Accomasso with Gregory Delpiazzo, Jamie Wolfe, and Robert Latiner. What you have just heard is the recording that Rob Latiner made during that visit.

[01:34:00] Rob shared with me the recording and both he and Lorenzo Accomasso gave me the permission to use that recording on this program. In 2015, and this was a year before I had any experience with wine, I was invited to a wine tasting at the L'Occitane in Paris.

[01:34:24] I was invited to a wine tasting at the L'Occitane in Paris. I was invited to a wine tasting at the L'Occitane in Paris. In 2015 and 2016, I returned to visit Accomasso with Giuseppe Vaira, who acted as translator.

[01:34:36] In 2015 and 2016, I returned to visit Accomasso with Giuseppe Vaira, who acted as translator. And what I have done in this episode is combined material from all three of those visits, which means from several hours of time spent with Accomasso. The 2014 recording is vastly edited down from the original,

[01:34:52] which had moments of conversation between Gregory Delpiazzo and Lorenzo Accomasso, as Greg speaks fluent Italian. I had the recording translated, and here I want to thank Carlotta Rinaldi for some great work.

[01:35:04] And then I added into the text several things that Accomasso had actually told me at different times during those visits in 2015 and 2016. during those visits in 2015 and 2016. Often Accomasso returned to the same or a similar topic but mentioned something further about it,

[01:35:20] and I included that to better illustrate the points that he was making. So what you have just heard in English is a combination of material from different visits. I would also like to thank Gregory Delpiazzo for giving me the permission to use the 2014 recording with his blessing,

[01:35:32] as Greg is the person who made the appointment with Accomasso at that time and who first introduced me to Accomasso. I also want to give particular thanks to Carlotta Rinaldi and Giuseppe Vaira for their patient translation work and for answering many, many of my emails.

[01:35:48] Further thanks is owed to the great Chris Thiele, who wrote the original recording and the translation of the recording. Further thanks is owed to the great Chris Thiele, who read the English translation text for this episode. Thank you, Chris.

[01:36:04] Seek out an album by the Punch Brothers to hear more of Chris's great work. I also note that the whistling of Bella Ciao was performed by Budi Satva, and the use of that falls under a Creative Commons attribution license, which you can find online.

[01:36:20] I consulted many, many resources in the course of research for this episode, including, as a note, the A History of Italy podcast, also a book whose title could be translated as Luigi Varinelli Walk the Land, an appreciation of Cesare Pavesi entitled The Outsider's Art,

[01:36:36] which appeared in the New York Review of Books, and a video interview of Lorenzo Accomasso speaking in Italian, which was posted to Vimeo by Mauro Firmariello. Those were all key resources for me when composing this episode, and I recommend checking those all out.

[01:36:56] I particularly loved the moment in the Firmariello video where Lorenzo Accomasso said, in my opinion, you gotta be yourself. Then people will accept you. I should say in keeping with that, that I am not a historian, and also that I relied heavily on both Encyclopedia Britannica

[01:37:12] and on Wikipedia when researching this episode as well. I do take sole responsibility for any factual errors I may have made in the process. This episode was the result of several months of hard work, and actually quite a few dollars.

[01:37:28] If you would like to support that work and help us out, please feel free to make a donation to the show. You can find a link for doing so on the show website, illdrinktothatpod.com, which is the show website, and has a link there for a donation.

[01:37:48] Here's a quote from the Firmariello interview, where the old man Lorenzo Accomasso said, I live my day thinking of the future. I plant vineyards. That's so good, I'll read that one more time.