I believe that this poem gives us yet another example of how Barbera is the true king of Piedmont wines. Or is it a queen?

There’s a saying, too often repeated in the Italian Wine world: Barolo is the king of wines and the wine of kings. That may be true. And many point to the fact that Italy’s King Vittorio Emanuele II (1820-1878) was one of Barolo’s pioneers and one of its earliest advocates. So, technically, Barolo was the wine of a king.

The fact of the matter is that no one would have ever uttered that phrase during Vittorio Emanuele’s liftime. At the time of his death, no one could have even imagined the popularity that Barolo would obtain in the period following World War II. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1990s, really, that Barolo became an international powerhouse.

One of the things that I kept thinking about as I translated and annotated the famous Poem “A Ciapin” by Giovanni Pascoli (one of the greatest Italian poets, literary scholars, and critical theorists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) was how the wine that stars in his celebrated ode wasn’t Barolo.

It was Barbera.

Originally, published in 1899, some 20 years after the king’s passing, the poem was inspired by a letter written by the renowned Italian soldier Giuseppe Galliano (1846-96) who had fought and died famously in Italy’s first colonial war in Ethiopia. Galliano knew that he would perish in Africa and he knew that he would never return home. And so he wrote to a friend in Piedmont asking him to save him a bottle of his favorite Barbera — a wine he knew he’d never drink.

Pascoli was so moved by the poem that he adapted it into one of his most famous poems. The ode would ultimately become a “pop hit” of its day. Click here for some background on the poem’s composition. And click here for the translated poem.

From a cultural and viticultural perspective, I believe that this is one of the most important takeaways from the poem. It’s important to remember: Galliano was a towering “pop icon” of his time, an Italian martyr who died in the service of his country (it’s part of the reason Pascoli was aware of the letter and was aware of Galliano).

He was a genuine Italian hero. And the wine that he longed for — the wine he would never get to drink again — wasn’t Barolo or Nebbiolo. It was Barbera. Earlier this year, I wrote about how Barbera was one of the most widely planted grapes in the world at the end of the 19th century, with vineyards stretching literally from Italy (and not just Piedmont) to California.

I believe that this poem gives us yet another example of how Barbera is the true king of Piedmont wines. Or is it a queen?

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