Shop

Piedmont ('foot of the mountain'), lying in a remote amphitheatre of the Alps in northwestern Italy, is the country's preeminent fine-wine region and the homeland of the nebbiolo grape — no place in the world grows more of it, or has had more success with this difficult, highly site-specific variety (only about 8 percent of Piedmont's plantings).

From nebbiolo come Barolo and Barbaresco, two of Italy's most legendary and serious reds — structured, tannic, ageworthy wines often likened to great red Bordeaux and, in the Italian mind, to the kingly status of France's cabernet sauvignon; Barolo is the more robust and austere (the 'king'), Barbaresco the slightly more graceful (the 'queen').

Both are grown in the Langhe hills of the southeast around the town of Alba, whose clay-limestone-sand soils and south-tilted 'bricco' and 'sori' slopes give maximum ripeness.