The Barbera d’Asti Festival in Castagnole delle Lanze is one of those events that perfectly captures the spirit of Piedmont: great wine, local food, live music, and producers who proudly pour the best of their work. Here’s a recap of the highlights and the standout bottles from this year’s edition.

Castagnole delle Lanze – Barbera d’Asti Festival

Got my fill of Barbera d’Asti and some other nice treats, thank you Castagnole delle Lanze for such a wonderful wine and food festival. One thing that I love about living in Italy are the festivals. Every town has their specialty, whether it be foods, wine, or even antiques. Every weekend there is something to do here and people travel from all over to partake in the freshest ingredients.

Last weekend was the Castagnole delle Lanze Barbera d’Asti festival and there were about 23 different producers strategically placed around the historic part of the town. With every producer was live music and a different type of food to pair with your wine. Which means I got to taste a lot of wine, and here are the greatest ones that I have tasted.

Top Wines Tasted

Barroero Barbera d’Asti 2013 Azzurra: Marco is the winemaker and makes about 600 bottles a year. Super small high-quality production. This wine was wonderful, showing fruits of blackberries, plum, iron (kind of like raw meat — something very typical of Barbera), with great acidity and a long finish.

Four friends who had a love for sparkling wine during an ongoing dream in enology school decided to try making a sparkling wine from this area’s most prized grape: Nebbiolo. They call themselves Erpacrife (Eric, Paolo, Cristian, and Federico), and they make a wonderfully dry sparkling wine. I have always said if you have fish and chips this would be the perfect wine.

The 2011 Erpacrife Nebbiolo was wonderful — pink grapefruit, peaches, white flowers. The color they have been able to maintain from the Nebbiolo is the color of an onionskin pink. The vineyard is in the area of Alba Madonna di Como, located in an amphitheater-like site where the climate is cooler, helping Nebbiolo ripen slowly and maintain lower sugar levels and higher acidity.

Gianni Doglia had a few things to try at his stand, and so I did! First I tasted the Grignolino 2015: strawberry, floral, a bit of tannins, very rich in the mouth. Everyone in this area seems to be very happy with the 2015 vintage, making bigger, fruit-driven wines. The Barbera d’Asti 2015 was the bomb — black fruits, plum, pleasant acidity (much less meaty than the 2013s).

Dogliotti 1870 — as you can imagine, there are many generations of winemaking going on in this house. It all started in Castiglione Tinella and later moved to Castagnole delle Lanze, where the winery and family are located today. The Barbera d’Asti 2014 was elegant, linear, with red fruit and floral notes compared to other vintages, and had a clean acidity.

Final Thoughts

This festival is always a good time, and I will plan to go again next year. I just hope it does not rain.