That the weather has a direct influence on each year’s results is irrefutable.
Every winemaker knows that the same wine can never be had, because the weather, which is unique and unrepeatable each year, has such an effect.

Often I realise that consumers look for a product they can recognise, with a familiar taste. This is just like going to a restaurant and asking for a drink of a particular brand and getting a similar, but different drink–one that we aren’t used to.

Of course wine isn’t–and shouldn’t be–compared to an industrial drink.
The latter should indeed have the same flavour to satisfy each client and reassure with the same, consistent taste.

But wine is an expression of the land,

the vintage, the weather

and the winemaker.

I find it really interesting to look for different sensations attributable to the weather in all its aspects (for example, different temperatures at different points during the year, the number of millimetres of rain, the percentage humidity, or the differing lengths of each season) and how these are expressed in the wine and influence each year.

• Vintages with higher than average temperatures (especially from flowering to harvest) usually bring early-ripening grapes, with greater quantities of sugar. This results in higher than average alcohol content than in cooler years, which usually result in less alcoholic wine.
• Years that are sunnier than usual can result in wines with more lively and intense colour (keeping in mind the colour characteristics of each variety) or wines with more attenuated colour.
• Years with greater temperature fluctuations between day and night (especially towards veraison) enrich and amplify aromas and bouquet, while also adding to elegance and refinement.
• Vintages that are especially favoured and of unusual quality are a result of excellent ripening (in all aspects) of the grape clusters, leading to a perfectly-timed harvest.

The ideal weather for each variety differs; it is a rare-enough occurrence and it makes wines from exclusive parts of the world (for example, Nebbiolo in the Langhe region) unique.

It is stimulating to look for and find all these aspects in a glass of wine, instead of looking for identical characteristics each year.
To be able to taste different vintages of the same wine and perceive the many different sensations is what I look for and prefer.

And it is also what distinguishes wine from any other type of conventional drink.

Here in Piedmont, we agricultural and winegrowing families have a unique word that immediately conveys a very precise meaning, a word that doesn’t exist in the rest of the world. It might not mean much outside our regional boundaries, but inside my head it conjures up the sound of the voices of my grandparents and parents.

The ciabot.

That’s what we say here in the Langhe. In the Monferrato area they say casot, but it’s just a different name for the same thing.

For those who don’t speak Piedmontese dialect, a ciabot or casot is a tiny little house set in the middle of the vineyards, almost as though to protect them or to watch over the grapes. In actual fact, the ciabot has always fulfilled a much less poetic purpose than it might seem from the outside: it was merely a glorified tool shed, used to store the equipment used in the vineyard, inhabited by spiders, insects, the occasional field mouse and all kinds of birds.

The ciabot was created to meet the daily needs of those who worked in the fields every day and needed to take their tools with them every day, or as a place to take shelter from a sudden summer storm while they were working in the vineyards.

The natural solution was a little brick building that could also be used to store drinking water and food, as well as providing shelter for people.

Some of my childhood memories are of hot spring or summer days, running around barefoot and carefree among the vines, and then sitting down at the table of the ciabot to eat bread and jam, bread and sugar, or fruit. Those tables were also used at the end of the days during the grape harvest, when everyone would have dinner together in the vineyard, tired and dirty, but happy about the grapes that had been harvested to give birth to a new wine.

You can find ciabots everywhere in the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato.

Every vineyard has its own brick guardian which, if only it could speak, would have an endless stream of stories of generations of family to tell. Happy stories and sad ones, stories of arrivals and departures, of good harvests and bad ones, of drought, of years of hardship but also years that were sunny and serene, of children’s voices and the memories of the elderly.

And the ciabot has become UNESCO World Heritage.

Something that we’ve always had right under our noses has become a treasure, precious not only to us but to everyone. Things of simple beauty that tell the tale of a time when man’s pace matched that of nature, the two entwining in a strong and crazy love story.

Ciabots are so important to the people of Piedmont that a project called “Banca del Fare” (The Bank of Doing) has been created by the non-profit organisation Parco Culturale Alta Langa, to teach people the theory and practical techniques for the conservation of Piedmont’s heritage of stone buildings. A manual and tangible project to reconstruct the ciabots and restore the social dimension that characterised them in the past.

That’s just the way we Piedmontese are: we keep our heads down and work hard, concentrating on the fruits of our land, while building or work with invaluable treasures, like our ciabots, tiny houses full of life and the energy of the vineyards.

If you have the chance to pop in to see me, I’ll take you for a walk in the vineyards to learn about the ciabots of the Langa!

Ph credits: Franco Bello Fotografie

Luigi Veronelli used to say “you have to walk the earth”. Walk to learn, to live in perpetual movement and for the joy of progressing step by step.

So that’s exactly what we did a few weeks ago, with my kids Clara, 8, and Giovanni, 7, in the village of Murazzano: 749 metres above sea level, woods, animals and an impressive medieval tower which rises 33 metres above the houses. The village is known as the “shield and key of Piedmont” due to its strategic position, and is part of the Strada Romantica of the Langhe and Roero.

Have you ever been to Alta Langa?

I’m in love with it. I love that wild feeling that the part of the Langhe where Barolo grows has lost. If I close my eyes, I feel as though I’m breathing in the sea air. This is where my I’m going to plant my new Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vineyards, to make my Alta Langa docg.

Together with Clara and Giovanni, we walked and learned about the history of Murazzano, as though it were a fairy tale.

The village was once devoted almost exclusively to goat herding and is home to a much-loved DOP cheese named Murazzano after the village. Half way between a robiola and a toma, it’s made in small quantities using Langhe goat’s milk. It is also a Slow food presidio.

There is a legend about this cheese and I told it to the children, who like stories that are a little bit scary.

A young boy from Murazzano, called Giovannino, had been given the job of watching over some Murazzano cheeses but he became distracted and a big black crow swooped down and stole  some of them. Frightened that his mother would be angry with him, Giovannino followed the crow as fare as Ceva, known as a meeting place for witches and devils.  Giovannino was tired and hungry, so he decided to rest in a hut. When he entered the hut, he found a surprise: a table laden with all kinds of delicious things to eat. So the boy ate! All of a sudden the devil appeared and accused him of stealing his lunch. He ordered Giovannino to follow him to hell. The crafty young boy asked the devil to grant him a last wish: to drink some cool water from the well. Upon reaching the well, the devil leaned over it to see whether there was any water and Giovannino pushed him in. He promised to help the devil out but only if he returned the stolen Murazzano cheeses. The crow was actually the devil. And this goes to show how valuable this cheese was, so valuable that even the devil loved it (source: DOC cheeses of Italy, pp. 71-72).

Murazzano is a village known for its food and wine too.

Cafe Gianduja does excellent aperitifs (tel. +39  0173 798013): they have a list of very important and well-selected wines, including some very rare native grapes. If you want to have lunch or dinner in Murazzano, I can highly recommend Trattoria da Lele (tel. +39 0173 798016), a welcoming restaurant with a family atmosphere and a strictly Piedmontese menu. A great place to eat!

I’m going to close with some words from Veronelli: “Those who walk the earth know that the important thing is not to arrive, but to progress, step by step. Walking the earth is about expressing our lives in constant movement. Sometimes you have to stop to rest or think and to rejoice or cry, and then start walking again. Stop also to remember and relive the road you have travelled”.

Have you ever seen a vine “weep”? It really does happen. If you find yourself driving past a vineyard in March, stop the car and get out.

Walk up to a vine that’s been pruned and observe it carefully: every 30 seconds, a little teardrop forms on the incision where the vine has been pruned, and drops. This extraordinary phenomenon is something not everyone is aware of. We call it «weeping of the vine». Not tears of sadness, but a proclamation of life.

Let’s see what happens.

The plant reawakens from its winter sleep and recommences its lifecycle.  The “tears” are little droplets of sap, rising up the stalk of the vine and seeping out. This happens when the roots start working again, when the sap begins to rise up through the wood. It’s as though the vine is taking a deep breath before the birth of the new buds.

But what happens to the vine to make it weep?

The vine is explained clearly on the website www.agraria.org: “The budding phase is preceded by a typical phenomenon of the vine called “weeping”, which is actually the release of fluid from the xylem vessels where they have been pruned. This is due, on one hand, to the reactivation of the sugar metabolism – the transformation of starch into simple sugars – and the consequent reactivation of cellular respiration, and, on the other, the high level of absorption that characterises the roots, which peaks during this phase”.

But what are the “tears” made of?

This varies from one grape variety to another, but as a general rule they are a combination of mineral elements, organic compounds, sugars and acids.

How do we know when a vine is “weeping”?

Good question! It’s impossible to know for certain but, according to some agronomical studies, it always happens just after the middle of March. Fortunately, it lasts a few days. Don’t miss it this year: it’s an emotional experience! This is another aspect of life as a winegrower!