Why Scarpa in Nizza Monferrato Ages Its Barbera Longer Than Its Barbaresco

Italian wine law sets a minimum time each wine must spend in wood before it can be sold. For Barbaresco that is nine months. For Barbera d’Asti Superiore it is six. At Antica Casa Vinicola Scarpa, the Nizza Monferrato house owned since 2017 by Evgeny Strzhalkovsky, the Barbaresco gets 24 months while the Barbera gets 27 to 30 months, and Scarpa expects the Barbera’s aging potential to be on par with – if not greater than – either of its Barolos.

Scarpa publishes a technical sheet for every wine. When you set them side by side, the usual Piedmont hierarchy looks different.

• Tettineive, Scarpa’s Barbaresco, made with fruit from the Canova vineyard in Neive, spends 24 months in a 45-hectolitre Allier cask plus 12 months in bottle.

• Tettimorra, its Barolo, made with fruit from the Roncaglie vineyard in La Morra, spends from 26 to 30 months in cask and not less than 9 months in bottle.

• La Bogliona, the Barbera d’Asti Superiore, spends from 27 to 30 months in cask, roughly 6 more in steel, and from 18 to 24 months in bottle.

Only the allocation Barolo from Monvigliero in Verduno is held longer overall, and even that wine spends the same 32 months in wood. No wine in the range receives more cask time than the Barbera from the Monferrato hills.

Scarpa also publishes how long each wine should keep. Both Barolos and the Barbaresco are given more than twenty years, and La Bogliona more than twenty-five.

“Barbera is the purest expression of Scarpa’s identity,” says Davide Champion, chief executive of the house founded in 1900. “It has energy, depth and ageing potential, and the only way to show that is to give it the same years we give the Nebbiolo. More, in the cask.”

La Bogliona comes from a single vineyard in the Alto Monferrato. The wine is produced from 3.5 hectares inside Poderi Bricchi, the continuous estate between Castel Rocchero and Acqui Terme that Scarpa acquired in 1969 and still regards as its most historic vineyard. The parcel sits at 400 metres with a south-west exposure, on medium clay threaded with sand and rich in trace elements, including magnesium. The vines were planted in 1970.

Over the decades the estate has been parcelled according to what each slope does best. La Bogliona is the Barbera expression of that work.

Winemaking is classic for Scarpa and unusual for Barbera. The wine spends eighteen days on the skins in 54-hectolitre wooden vats, with two manual pump-overs a day. It is then racked into steel until malolactic fermentation finishes, after which it moves into large, old Allier casks, vessels that add almost nothing while time does the work.

“A big old cask does very little, very slowly,” Champion says. “With Barbera people reach for small new barrels because they want to give it something. We are not trying to give it anything. We are trying to let the acidity turn into structure, and that takes years, not months.”

The finished wine does not behave like the Barbera most drinkers expect. Scarpa’s own note lists leather and undergrowth before fruit, with a long mineral finish. The 2021, the current release, is priced at €50. Recent critical scores have been consistent: 96 points from Doctor Wine and 94 from Vinum for the 2020; 95 from Doctor Wine and 94 from Falstaff for the 2015.

Yes, given the right site and enough time. Scarpa puts La Bogliona’s cellar life at more than twenty-five years. It backs that with 32 months in cask and a full five years in the cellar before the wine reaches the market, where it then sells out within a year. Piedmont has been moving in the same direction, just more slowly. Barbera gained its own appellation at Nizza in 2014, bringing the single-site focus, lower yields and longer ageing requirements that Nebbiolo had always enjoyed. The 2021 vintage has already received major critical acclaim, including the prestigious Tre Bicchieri from Gambero Rosso and 5 Grappoli from the AIS Bibenda guide. This excellence is part of a long-standing pattern of consistent scores, ranging from 96 points from Doctor Wine and 94 from Vinum for the 2020 vintage, to 95 points from Doctor Wine and 94 from Falstaff for the 2015.