Gino and Gianluca produce two Barbera wines from their property, gowngrown inside the bounds of the historical Nizza DOCG, a spiritual heartland of sorts for the Barbera grape, farmed on a south-facing slope composed of calcareous marls and sandstones, with their baseline Barbera d’Asti hailsing from 20-40 year old vines. Gino and Gianluca employ an old Piemontese technique of submerging the grape must only toward the tail of fermentation for a more gentle, infusion-style approach to extraction. It then spends at least one year aging in concrete before bottling. The resulting wine is nimble, agile, and finely toned, with a softer structure than the typical Barbera wines from the Langhe, but also with more savory notes and more profound depth. The 2022 Barbera d’Asti all but glistens with squeaky clean and perfectly crisp red berry fruits, abutting more floral aromatic elements of lavender, dried basil, and tomato – both leaf and fruit. At once crunchy and juicy in the mouth, a comet’s tale of saline, mineral-dominant wash carries the wine to a classy finish. We’ve been fans of Sette since the get-go, but now working with fully biodynamically tended to fruit and a more in-depth understanding of their terroir, they are truly firing on all cylinders. Whereas wines have always been and remain pristine in their fruit purity, the saltiness that Gino speaks so fondly of in their soils really comes to define the wine today in a beautiful way. Drink at cellar temp and give it 30 minutes to open for the ultimate BBQ Barbera!