I was genuinely perplexed when we offered this wine a few months ago and it didn’t get much attention. Maybe it was just an off day. I know it wasn’t the wine: the stuff is delicious. Nevertheless I decided to share a bottle with my friend David Lynch, whom I’ve gotten to know since he first moved to San Francisco to run the Quince Restaurant wine program.
David is the co-author of Vino Italiano, an essential read for any MS candidate, and spent 7 years at NYC’s legendary Babbo Ristorante; I respect his Italian wine palate as much as anyone’s. “These Langhe Rossos were my bread-and-butter back in the Babbo days,” he said, nodding at his glass of Ars Vivendi, a Nebbiolo-Barbera blend from Barolo legend Renzo Seghesio. “It’s got the great Nebbiolo nose, it’s ready to drink, well-priced, from a great producer. Total crowd-pleaser but ‘serious’ enough to satisfy the geeks.” I couldn’t agree more, so I’m putting this 2011 out there again. It is seriously deserving.
And before I re-share the details of this wine, here’s a little more from David, who went on a highly entertaining rant about wine in restaurants and the Barbera grape (among other topics):
“Barbera doesn’t get enough love, which is a shame. It’s not just a workhorse; I dare you to diss Barbera to someone like Luca Currado at Vietti. He gives it just about the same respect as Nebbiolo. It goes with everything, it’s got great acid, and it’s really the perfect grape to blend with Nebbiolo because it doesn’t try to fight with Nebbiolo. If you blend Nebbiolo with Cabernet it’s like two alpha males slugging it out. Barbera’s happy to flesh out the color and soften the tannin of the Nebbiolo and otherwise stay out of the way. Like a bass player. Most restaurants don’t have the luxury of cellaring wines, which means you can drink a super-young Barolo that’ll leave you a little cold for the price or you can do a Langhe Rosso that’s yummy right away and cheaper, too. That’s why the producers make them and that’s why they’re such great restaurant wines.”
So, back to this wine: At Renzo Seghesio’s tiny Cascina Pajana, located in the Barolo-making village of Monforte d’Alba, Barbera and Dolcetto are interspersed with Nebbiolo in one of the great single-vineyard sites in the region, the southeast-sloping cru called ‘Ginestra.’ While you’re cellaring his Barolo, Seghesio has your near-term drinking covered with Ars Vivendi, one of those blends in which the component parts are readily identifiable—you’ve got the Barbera, with its concentrated cherry fruit, near-complete lack of tannin and bright acid, playing sideman to the edgier, virtuoso Nebbiolo, its aromatics ranging from currants to dried flowers to ash and tar. It’s a perfect pairing of near-opposites.
Generations of Seghesios have lived at the Cascina Pajana since 1900, and Renzo himself bottled his first wines in 1968; his Barolo bears the name ‘Pajana,’ which might be called a ‘cru-within-a-cru’ in that it has traditionally been considered a sub-section of Ginestra. Having served as the mayor of Monforte d’Alba for 25 years, this man truly lives and breathes his home terroir. For ‘Ars Vivendi,’ which translates as ‘Art of Living,’ he vinifies the Barbera and Nebbiolo separately (their proportions in the blend are about equal in the ’11 vintage) and then combines the wines in 15-hectoliter Slavonian oak casks for about two years’ aging. Then there’s another year in bottle before release—a considerable amount of refinement for a wine just a few bucks north of $20!
In fact, refinement is the perfect word: while the Barbera lends ruby-red depth to the typically brickish color of Nebbiolo, the nose might be mistaken for that of a Barolo, with all of the wonderful potpourri-like notes of dried flowers, cedar shavings and warm spices. As noted above, Barbera softens the texture, giving the wine a velvety, pleasant attack, with a nice dollop of cherry-berry on the mid-palate. The finish is long and satisfying, the Nebbiolo re-asserting itself at the end. It’s nicely bottle-aged at this point, and rather drinkable right out of the gate, but a half-hour or so in a decanter before service in Burgundy stems surely wouldn’t hurt. Serve it at just above cellar temp, about 60-65 degrees, alongside something bold like
this old-school pot roast.
