Barolo

Barolo, the great wine from the Piedmont region of north-west Italy, is often compared with Burgundy, for several reasons: Its celebrated vineyards are made up of small plots (more than 1,200 of them, almost as many as Burgundy’s according to a vineyard register from 1879), and its highly distinctive wines, made only from the Nebbiolo grape, closely reflect the specific sites where they’re grown.

Although Barolo has been esteemed for centuries, there’s never been an official ranking of the vineyards on the steep hillsides around the major villages in the region. For many years, wine merchants bought the grapes from numerous vineyards, and made and sold their wines under the names of the villages and, eventually, some of those hillside zones. In 1968, the system finally began to change, as wines began to be made from individual vineyard plots (usually known by the French term “crus,”), and those names soon appeared on the labels.

Today, many of those names are officially recognized for vineyards of proven worth, which adds another layer of useful information to our understanding of Barolo.