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Beppe Rinaldi died. Here is his "testament" on Barolo
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It was the free, critical and caustic soul of Barolo. The last anarchist in the cellar, in a land with more and more investors and less and less pure and artisanal winemakers. Beppe Rinaldi, for all "Citrico", died at the age of 70, on Sunday 2 September. The news was given by the Intravino and Cronache di gusto websites.
He was sick for a long time. Leave behind excellent wines and many thoughts. On the Langhe, on the Barolo, above all. In reality every time he discussed the way he understood his work, and how he saw it changing around him, he spoke more generally of mankind, of strength and weakness, power and submission, honesty and cunning. His public tastings were shows of civil oratory in which the wine seemed at most a co-star, never a center of exclusive interest. His utterances left their mark. The last one had entrusted it to the "Corriere della Sera", last January. So powerful that, eight months later, he continues to discuss: on the day of his death, a wine site, Winesurf, proposes on reflection starting from Rinaldi's letter. Which we reproduce below, as his last written document. Almost a will.
Now it is up to his wife Annalisa and his daughters Marta and Carlotta to continue his work, continuing to transfer in Barolo that free soul and the smile at the same time sweet and mocking, between the lips a Tuscan medium that burned like him.
Ride, tells jokes, anecdotes about the neighbor who was enriched by selling the pincer to castrate the calves in the world. But it gets dark when it speaks of the last decision of the Barolo and Barbaresco Consortium: to increase in 308 hectares the cultivation of Nebbiolo for Barolo (a vineyard of 2,112 hectares in 11 municipalities), in addition to the 10 already granted in 2017. « A wicked choice - proclaims - but here no one protests, there is silence ". The winemaker that everyone calls "Citrico", for its sharp judgments, has an alternative proposal. Here it is: «Instead of planting Nebbioli even under the beds it would be more advantageous to include Alba in the Barolo production area. In this way, lands belonging to the Alba area would be added, which is already part of the Barbaresco area, traditionally and historically much more suited than non-crypts and ravines.
We would save forests, hedges, willows, oaks and truffle poplars ". On January 2, the first call of "Citrico": "I have something strong to say about Barolo". But before arriving at the point it took many other phone calls, in which Beppe has juggled with lightning phrases, ironic jokes, proverbs and many memories. Until he decided: "I summarize everything I think and send you a few lines". The full reading (on the paper version of the article was published a summary) tells, in the manner of Rinaldi, the changes of the planet Barolo. Which has closed the last year with a sales growth of 7%. A planet with bottles, like the Monfortino 2010 by Roberto Conterno, on the market at more than 1,200 euros, where a hectare of land costs more than two million euros.
Here is the Rinaldi-thought.
"Barolo and Barbaresco should be an example in Italian enology in terms of protection and dignity, in foresight, as they were together with Brunello, Nobile di Montepulciano, Chianti. Here were born the rules and appellations by the will of Senator Desana and the Consortium for the protection of wines born in 1932. Perhaps the term protection that still boasts the Consortium sounds out of tune. The quantity of vines is already broken, it is almost all a vineyard, we have already lost not the bucolic, the rural, but the handkerchiefs of color, the diversity, for the benefit of monotonous, exaggerated monoculture. Then if you do a lot of product, you do it less well, you are convinced by money, the money convinces and corrupts. It is not because of poverty, but to see these noble wines going from 10 to 300 euros makes us think, as for the balsamic vinegar from 3 to 300 euros. The more the gap widens, the more mercantilism and globalization win. Protection Consortium and Region endorse this habit, when quality and image are in scarcity.
You should not make tourists come only for the wine and the truffle, the beauty and the integrity of the landscape must be maintained. There would be constraints to defend the varieties of the few remaining forests and against the consumption of the soil, against the neo-Gothic, the neo-Middle Ages, the neo-Palladio and the neo-pop, let's leave them to the Americans. Instead we want to distinguish at all costs, leave the mark of our passage and get to a quick image, when the true originality in certain places is not the risk but perhaps, the normality. Also because of Giotto few are born!
Barolo and Barbaresco should not be born or be proposed in clinical cellars, desired by nefarious norms, given birth by those in power ignore. In Burgundy and in Alsace wines and woods are on the earth, on stone, on gravel and are good, if you look up you can see molds and cobwebs, even bats. They are an added value, c'est charmant we are told.
Unesco has been awarded the wine heritage, not the villages.
To put vines to rape these almost unique and precious hills, we hurt these profiles with aggressiveness and imposture; not the "scuà d 'cà" - the fucking of houses of our ancestors but the terraced houses.
We are blind, we consciously sacrifice ourselves to the god of money for the multiplication of bread and fish or for narcissism. Quality does not lie in abundance, especially for certain products whose hierarchy is inherent, inescapable; a Dolcetto, a Barbera will never become a Nebbiolo, but we must respect the merits and positions of all the wines, as Giorgio Bocca said.
These hills are fragile, the marls slide downstream, if it happens to cry to the wolf.
Our old men with an ox could not think of turning over a hill. We have the bulldozers and the jumbe, and the tree has become an obstacle like the ciabot with the advance of the track. We cut the trees also for the parking of cars and buses.
Some say that we beat the French on the markets with the numbers of the bottles, but here we had the beak to call the vocated areas, the noble crus, first "subzones" then "additional geographical references". The grand cru as the grandmotion, that of the morning ..., or the petite one at the edge of the village, and think that we have the sorì, beautiful for sound and image that evokes the sorrow, sunny, in itself laudatory. Let us also apologize, but at least positively, without subjection, with dignity and cunning.
On these hills we have never enclosed the vineyards, there are no stones for the walls and the Burgundy closes of convents and monks.
We have always united the vineyards; the Marchesi Falletti, lords of Barolo, mixed the grapes of the area of Serralunga with that of La Morra and Barolo.
It is an improvement for the harmony and balance of wines produced from single-variety, but it seems to be denied, and it is forbidden to declare it on labels for fear, silence, subjection or for simple interests of commercial lobbies. Democracy is a luxury on these hills, but it is also for our Italy that De Gaulle apostrophized not a poor but poor country.
The vineyards in the Langhe The Consortium of wines that has made over the years definite and flaunted revolutions as Copernican, has also sold off soul, roles and dignity as well as a control body, in the Valoritalia case; he also tried to overcome the monovitigno Nebbiolo, a privilege but at the same time a distress and a challenge. The members of the Consortium must pay but do not vote in the assembly because they "think belly". The ethics of the feud must be maintained on these magical and famous hills.
We must enrich, but not mature, rather the vines also on the roofs, but not the culture, when it is also for it that tourists must come. Fortunes and vineyards triumph, dangerously, even in unworthy places; the climate has changed a lot and the late Nebbiolo matures fortunately today even where there were pits and pastures. There is still the memory of when, without regulations, of Doc and Docg the Tir from the South arrived with the Reposto, the Nerello and the Nero d'Avola, the Cirò to adjust the crunchy Nebbioli. It was tried much more recently to hunt in noble wines, already passed in the meantime from a few 6 to 13 and now perhaps to 18 million bottles "black grape vines". Yet we have before us the example of Brunello with attached and connected past from 200 to 2,000 hectares in a very short time.
A Nebbiolo vineyard for Barolo A Nebbiolo vineyard for Barolo Perhaps Domizio Cavazza was the founder of the great Alba Wine School and inventor of Barbaresco. His project seems to have extended the Barolo area to Barbaresco; certainly the delirium of a dreamer of Modena free from the parochialism of these hills. But, instead of putting Nebbioli under the beds, it would then be more advantageous to include the capital in the Alba production area. A twelfth common for the Barolo, the dozen is also a number for the golden eggs ...
In this way, lands belonging to the Alba area would be added, which is already part of the Barbaresco area, traditionally and historically, much more suited than non-crypts and ravines. Hedges, willows and maybe oaks and poplars from truffles would be saved. Barolo and Barbaresco wines with aromas and elegant and noble tastes, would have the blessing of noble women, refined palates and wealthy windowsills. The Countess of Mirafiore lover and wife of King Vittorio and Castiglione, cousin of Cavour, who frequented these hills also for the joy of the farmers of the Langhe.
