You might have read about the venerable Tenuta Olim Bauda (and its head honcho, Gianni Bertolino) here before, as I’ve previously covered my gig promoting Italy’s incredible Monferrato region over at at MyNameIsBarbera.com. Back in December, the MNiB team had produced video of me getting the low-down from Bertolino on Nizza, the relatively new tippy-top of the Barbera DOCG quality pyramid.

Well, we’ve got some more vid from that session, this time covering the first part of my Nizza tasting with Bertolino, during which I get introduced to more recent vintages of the (quite excellent) stuff. You can jealously watch me gulping down some tasty Nizza reds int he embedded video below. Next up in the series will probably be the second half of that tasting, in which I get to drink older Nizza vintages to see if they live up to their age-ability hype.

Tough job, right?

Barbera in the Glass: Nizza Tasting #1

Cheers!

For the most recent installment of the Monferrato in the Glass series over at MyNameIsBarbera.com, we provide another deeper dive into the vinous wares of the region, once again with Bava‘s Paolo Bava.

Paolo introduces me to Piedmonte’s version of Red Dawn: Albarossa. Albarossa has a unique history, even by historical-embarrassment-of-riches Italian standards. It’s actually relatively new, and something that really only could have been conceived within the hilly borders of Piedmonte (you can read up a bit more on Albarossa’s storied past here).

After viewing the vid below, you’ll have a much better idea of why drinking this wine will make you want to pronounce Albarossa with a slow, voluptuous, sing-songy Italian accent.

AAAAHL-baaahhh-ROOOOWWWW-ssssaaaahhhhhhh…..

Cheers!

Is there anything more adorable than a Weimaraner happily chomping on Barbera grapes in a Monferrato vineyard? Besides maybe a Weimaraner puppy eating grapes in that vineyard?

That’s the question that we pose (sort of) in the latest Monferrato Moves installment over at MyNameIsBarbera.com. In that video (also embedded below), I have the pleasure of sitting down with Tenuta Olim Bauda‘s Gianni Bertolino, who, aside from owning dogs and making incredibly serious, long-lived, and tasty Barbera, also happens to be President of the Associazione dei Produttori del Nizza. So, he knows a couple (of hundred) things about the tippy-top of the Barbera DOCG quality pyramid.

In this vid, Bertolino and I taste through a couple of more recent Nizza DOCG releases, and I don’t spit, which should tell you something about how good his wines are. Enjoy!

Cheers!

Let’s bid adieu to November, in our hazy, Post-Thanksgiving-Holiday trytophanic bliss, by catching up on the happenings over at My Name Is Barbera (for whom I’ve been doing both written and video work helping to promote Barbera – and other – wines from the Monferrato area).

First, there’s a lips-eye-view (yeah, I agree, that phrase was a bad idea) of Monferrato’s vinous equivalent of a Wild and Crazy Guy, Grignolino. I’ve written about this wily, overachieving red grape before, but here’s a chance to get up close and personal with it through a video tasting of Grignolino wine with Paolo Bava, whose passion for these wines will quickly be evident once you start watching.

Next, we get back to our normal programming, which means focusing on Barbera. In an interesting twist, in the next vid we move away from the relatively small production outfits that have been the focus of much of our previous journey through Monferrato’s Barbera producers, and talk with Lorenzo Giordano of Vinchio Vaglio (who just celebrated their 30th anniversary, with an event at which I was supposed to speak, but couldn’t attend because I got wicked sick… and yeah, I’m still a little raw about it, thankyouverymuch…). As you’ll see in the vid below, Giordano oversees a sizeable cooperative operation, and so has a unique, 20,000-foot view of Barbera throughout the region, and through all of its various quality levels.

Cheers!