Barbera d’Asti

The wine must be at least 90 per cent Barbera. The vine is greedy for sunlight, so it takes the slopes facing between south-east and west and stays out of the valley floors; the soils are mostly calcareous, of moderate depth, over the marl, sandstone and limestone of the Piedmontese Tertiary basin, the old sea bed raised into hills.

Plain Barbera d'Asti ages at least four months; the Superiore at least fourteen from the first of November of the harvest year, six of them in oak. Labels may add a vigna, or the subzones Tinella and Colli Astiani. Barbera d'Asti became a DOC in 1970 and a DOCG in 2008.