If you’re a barbera fan like me, you love its fruity character, low tannins, and snappy acidity, which make it a versatile food wine for weekday dining. But barbera worth cellaring? That’s a whole different story.

So let me introduce Nizza. It’s a new appellation for barbera coming from 18 townships in the province of Asti, with Nizza Monferrato at the center. This area has always been known for exceptional barbera. “Historically, they paid more for grapes in this area compared to other parts of Piedmont,” says Gianni Bertolino, co-owner of Tenuta Olim Bauda winery. “If merchants wanted to buy good quality barbera, the first place they’d come was here.”

“I like to say it’s the filet mignon of barbera,” Luigi Coppo says of the region, which reserves its best vineyard plots for barbera. His family’s historic winery, Coppo, makes a whopping seven different types of barbera.

Barbera is Piedmont’s most widely planted grape. In Asti and Alessandria provinces, it’s grown in 169 townships, where it becomes Barbera d’Asti. The hills around Alba add to the tally with Barbera d’Alba.

But Nizza producers are trying to separate themselves from the herd, which can include good sheep and bad sheep. They want to be associated with outstanding sheep and are staking their claim on their soil and how barbera behaves differently here — gaining structure, complexity, finesse, and ageability. In the past, when a baby was born to a winemaking family, they’d set some bottles aside for the child to open when he reached adulthood. That speaks to Nizza’s ageability.

The process of carving out an identity for Nizza is fascinating to watch, like going back in time to witness the beginnings of Barolo, Barbaresco, or Gavi. Like Nizza, each of those appellations dropped the grape from their name, substituting a town. It’s a risky gambit, since the first question consumers ask about a wine is “What’s the grape?” But people have been increasingly gravitating towards wines not based on the winemaker’s hand, but those that express a unique identity based on terroir. So Nizza might be perfectly timed to right to ride that wave.

To hear how the Nizza appellation was born and what its future holds, I paid a visit to the incoming and outgoing presidents of the Nizza Producers Association, Stefano Chiarlo and Gianni Bertolino respectively.

The Birth of Nizza

The lunch spot Bertolino chooses is where it all began. We’re on a shady patio of the Enoteca Regionale di Nizza Monferrato, which started out in 1990 as the Bottega del Vino. Founded by Tullio Mussa, a politician, Slow Food advocate, and barbera lover, it was one of the first wine bars in Piedmont, plus so much more.

“Bottega del Vino became a laboratory of ideas,” Bertolino relates. “Tullio brought together young producers, big producers, coops, and so on. His idea was to create a group to talk about Nizza and barbera, just around the table with some wine and salami.”

Thus the Nizza group spirit began. At the time, that mentality was rare. Stefano Chiarlo, conversing later in the winery founded by his father, Michele Chiarlo, cites an old Italian expression: “Every plant creates shade.” That is, competitors are best kept at a distance. As he explains, “In Piedmont in the past, everybody hoped for the best for themselves and the worst for their neighbors.” It took a lot of effort to switch that zero-sum thinking to ‘all boats rise with the incoming tide.’

Michele Chiarlo was among that older generation who understood the benefit of working with others. “He wasn’t afraid to collaborate with competitors,” says his son. As a young man, Michele was among the pioneers to a new approach to Barolo, then later in Nizza, he linked arms with a group of fresh-faced enology graduates from the area. That group was called Vigna del Nizza, and they brought new ideas about quality wine and single-vineyard bottlings.

In the 1990s, they started to lobby the bureaucrats who oversaw Italy’s wine appellations to have Nizza declared a subzone of Barbera d’Asti. “Why? The so-called Golden Triangle between Agliano, Nizza, and Mombaruzzo was considered for a long time one of the best areas for barbera,” Bertolino explains. The subzone was approved in 2000, and soon after, winemakers formed the Nizza Producers Association.

One of the first things they did was start a blind tasting, which is now annual and compulsory. Everyone tastes each other’s Nizza (unidentified, as in all blind tastings), anonymously critiques the wine, then producers receive the comments pertaining to their wine. The motive? “Producers are usually closed. They taste only their own wine and think theirs is the best,” Bertolino says with a laugh. “So the first mission of this tasting was to open minds and create the spirit of the association.”

The blind tastings simultaneously elevated quality. “You can imagine, if you’re a producer and you receive a bad note one time, two times, three times, you probably start to think that something is wrong with your process, no?” Bertolino continues. “You might see ‘Ah, my wine was ranked sixth. But even I said it wasn’t very good compared to the others.’ So it’s a process to improve without offending anybody.”

It also helped establish a unified approach to Nizza wine, Bertolino notes. “Nizza needs to be a certain way, with a certain structure, a certain acidity, freshness, fruity character, oak but not evident oak.” Chiarlo concurs: “The idea of the appellation needs to have the same philosophy. If you think about Barolo, you know what Barolo is.” The same should go for Nizza.

In 2014, Nizza’s status was elevated from a subzone to a denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG). In the vineyard, the rules require very low yields: 7 tons per hectare. Far lower than Barbera d’Asti’s 9 tons and even lower than Barolo’s 8 tons. In the cellar, they specify 100 percent barbera, aged for a minimum of 18 months before release, including at least six months in wood barrels. Reserves require 30 months of aging, including one year in wood.

The Mission Ahead

Restaurants are key to spreading the word, since sommeliers act as ambassadors to the wines on their list. One reason for removing ‘barbera’ from the appellation name was it would force sommeliers to create a separate category for Nizza apart from other barberas — which in Piedmont, at least, could number in the dozens.

“If we called it Barbera d’Asti Superiore Nizza, what would the sommeliers do? They’d just write ‘barbera’,” says Bertolino. “If you cut the name barbera, they need to open a new category for Nizza. A distributor or importer who sees that list will say, ‘Oh, I don’t have any Nizza on my list. I need one.’ ” From there, it trickles down to retail.

The numbers indicate the gamble is working. Between 2016 to 2019 production doubled, and sales grew commensurately. “This is the trend,” says Bertolino. “When I became president in 2015, production was 250,000. Last year, it was 630,000. Probably this year will end at 800,000. We estimate the potential of the territory is 4.5 million bottles, like Barbaresco.”

Chiarlo confirms, “The association has grown a lot. At the beginning, there were 15 producers. Now we are 68.” He adds, “The cost of land here has grown 300 percent in the last five to six years.” Barolo producers are leading the way in investments. Vietti, Prunotto, Marchesi di Barolo, Oddero, and Gagliardo have all bought vineyards, and where they lead, others will follow.

Single-vineyard Nizza

Another milestone in Nizza’s development was 2017’s vineyard map, created by Alessandro Masnaghetti, the same cartographer who mapped the cru of Barolo and Barbaresco.

“You know why this map is important?” asks Bertolino. “Because the mind of the producer changed completely.” Before, he explains, producers had only a few prototypes in mind: either ‘modern style’ barbera using French barrique, or ‘old style’ barbera with maturation in large, neutral casks. The vineyard map shifted the conversation away from modernist versus traditionalist and towards terroir. “Every producer knows they have a unique vineyard,” Bertolino continues. “They don’t care anymore about old style, new style. No, they care about their vineyard. They need to extract from the soil and the grape the characteristics of their unique vineyard.”

Producers have already begun to make single-vineyard Nizza, with labels displaying the name of the cru. “The goal is to arrive at MGA as soon as possible,” says Chiarlo, referring to menzione geografica aggiuntiva, the officially sanctioned place names for vineyards, which have become extra important in this age of terroir-driven wine. “This is the key to help professional people understand every cru, every single vineyard,” Chiarlo states.

Back to the wine

But fear not. You don’t have to learn the minutia of MGAs to enjoy a good bottle of Nizza. I’d suggest you start with Michele Chiarlo’s Cipressi. Grab the 2015 if you can find it, since that vintage won the No.1 spot on Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 Wines of 2018. “That helped the whole appellation,” Stefano Chiarlo affirms. If you’re into pretty labels, Cipressi is for you. It features the 250-year-old cypresses planted in the vineyard by a Tuscan farmer who longed for a reminder of home.

If you’re looking for something with more power and longevity, try Michele Chiarlo’s single-vineyard Reserva wines. Both La Court and La Court Vigna Veja come from old vines (45 years and 60 years respectively), which bring incredible concentration, texture, and a super-long finish. Both are complex wines suited for special dinners and holiday meals.

Among their Nizzas, Olim Bauda makes only Nizza Reserve as well as a cru called Bauda. The 2015 is to die for. A hot vintage, the 2015 has already developed some tertiary notes of chocolate and spice, while retaining its appealing blackberry fruit, bright acidity, and velvety tannins.

Today you’ll find 2017 Nizzas on the market. These are still young and all about the fruit. Buy a few bottles and uncork one now. But do your darndest to stash the rest away for at least a few years. Then you’ll see what Nizza is all about.