2007 Barbera d'Alba

On the rainy day of my visit here, Bruno Rocca was running around like a madman, as several sets of craftsmen had simultaneously arrived to work on various elements of Rocca's major new cellar expansion. (Luckily, he did not face the additional task of harvesting that day.) Bruno's daughter Luisa describes the family's 2006 Barbarescos as "elegant, round, fruity and balanced," whereas the '07s are "more typically austere and classic, with a more rigid structure and a lot of tannins"-in other words, a description almost diametrically opposed to the one I heard from some other producers in the region, especially in Barolo. She added that there's no shortage of tannins in the 2006s but that they're masked by fruit, whereas the tannins in the 2007s "come through more." That's why Bruno did a bit less maceration in 2007: seven or eight days (40% of the fruit is done in rotofermenters), vs. eight to ten in 2006. Rocca has a somewhat different take on recent vintages than Luisa: he considers 2001, 2004 and 2006 to be the great years. "These vintages were easy to make but hard to explain," he told me. "Two thousand seven is a great year but less so for the true Piemonte palate."