Nizza

The vineyards must be on hillsides facing between south-east and south-west, never on valley floors or damp ground, on stratified clay-sand marls and sandstones — the old sea floor of the Piedmontese Tertiary basin. Vines are trained on upright trellises, pruned to Guyot or low spurred cordon, and picked only by hand.

The wine is 100 per cent Barbera, cropped at no more than seven tonnes a hectare, or 6.3 for a single named vigna. It ages at least 18 months from the first of January after the harvest, six of them in wood; a Riserva at least 30, with twelve in wood. Nizza began as a subzone of Barbera d'Asti and became a DOCG of its own in 2014.