Piedmont retained many of those traditions and values in part because it was so poor. I recall talking to a producer who said that in the 70s their family traded part of a now very famous vineyard for land to build a house on. It would be nice for us to keep Barolo as it is now, but I suspect many of the children of the growers don’t want to stay in the Langhe and be farmers, which is quite natural. My understanding is that the Vietti sale was driven in part by the various family members wanting to cash out. After all, no one forced Vietti to sell to Krause - if anything, Vietti were a victim of their own success. More than almost any other winemaker in Barolo, Vietti were better at marketing their brand, which attracted an interest in an international sale.
I understand not wanting to see changes in Barolo, but I think they’re the inevitable result of more money flowing to the region.
Do you think the same thing applies to what Roberto Conterno is doing in Alto-Piedmonte? He is sort of a local buying another local winery. I’ve heard that the winery he has built for Nervi-Conterno looks like something more suited to Napa Valley (whatever that means). Regardless, his reivigorization of the region could be viewed as a mixed blessing too.
This is starting to rub me the wrong way. Am I understanding correctly that you feel that these “centuries-old families” (as if that were such a rare thing) have a duty to stay there to showcase their “history, culture and traditions” regardless of their personal needs or desires?
What exactly is your solution to this “problem”? You yourself list many positives.
The fact that my opinion rubs you the wrong way does not concern me. Why don’t you tell us why you think billionaires buying up ancient lands and multi-generational wineries is a good thing.
I’m not saying it’s either intrinsically good or bad. Grossly concentrated wealth is a global problem, sure.
But if the buyer were a Piemontese billionaire, would you have voiced the same complaints about centuries-old families and their history, culture and traditions?
After all, acquiring land through gross displays of wealth and power is one of the most culturally Italian things imaginable. There’s a case to be made that they invented the practice.
I’ll add that all lands everywhere are fundamentally just as ancient.
Greg_K, in what ways were the Piemontese poor? Monetarily, certainly. But is that your only metric for wealth? I would submit to you that they were richer in many other ways, even if they were monetarily poor. At the time of the 2022 harvest, in conversation with an older neighbor, she told me that in the harvest days of the past, the whole village would gather for a communal meal with dancing and music. And today, nothing. But they all have more money than they used to. But are they richer for it?
It’s very clear Luca and his wife didn’t want to cash out or sell. didnt seem they they felt they had much of a choice. The decanter article says it quite straight out and from the two IDTT episodes it’s possible to read between the lines or just listen carefully for that matter.
The offer was “too good” to not accept by some family member(a). I feel very sorry for Luca and Elena. Sad when greed and family pride means that little to the driving force of relative(s) who wanted to cash out. I’m sure they could have been bought out (by Luca/Elena), and I reckon within family consideration can/should be take to other values than profit maximization. Maybe I’m old fashion in that sense…
The Piedmontese were poor because they had very little money. The literal meaning of the word.
I’m sure the older neighbor you spoke to misses the older traditions, but I’m equally sure there are younger people from Piedmont currently living in Milan or Rome going to University instead of doing subsistence farming who don’t miss the old traditions. The world moves on and people have opportunities to do other things.
That should be an historically uncontroversial fact. I don’t bring it up to throw shade on the Italians. Their history is what it is. I do it so that he will state openly what his actual cultural problem is with a person of Italian ancestry, who loves Italian wine and by all accounts and his own admission is a good person, buying land in Barolo.
I do it to unmask both the fossilizing pastoral narrative, and the urge to deny agency and self-fulfillment to the sellers.
I didn’t know that about Prunotto not having vineyards.
My point about Borgogno and Fontanafredda was that it was someone with big bucks whose family had not been winemakers. The Fontanafredda normale can be very oaky, so it doesn’t seem like he’s aiming to preserve traditions. I haven’t had the Borgogno wines since the cantina changed hands.
LOL. And they left us the legacy of the Renaissance as proof! Bravo!
I can think of some Loire and Bordeaux chateaux, some Rhine castles and some English estates that suggest the Italian’s didn’t have a monopoly on the practice, though. Visit Newport, Rhode Island, for examples of the tradition being carried to the New World.
I genuinely have no clue what Guillermo is talking about, but many cultures that long predate the Italians had a common policy of land acquisition. Don’t even have to get past the Romans (who, to be clear, were neither Italians nor themselves the first to do it).
Again as a historical matter. They gave us the Roman Empire and its code of laws, Florentine banking, Venetian commerce, the Papal states, and centuries of internecine wars; for starters.
This argument would be easily torn apart by any history professor that focuses on Roman or pre-unification Italy. I don’t have the desire to go much more into it, but Romans aren’t and weren’t Italians, they were Romans. Venetians weren’t Italians, they were Venetians. And so forth