For generations barbera was Piedmont's everyday wine — the carafe on the worker's table while nebbiolo went down to the cellar. It is nebbiolo's opposite in build: dark of colour, high in acid, low in tannin, all dark cherry and violet, drinkable in its youth where Barolo demands a decade.
Its promotion was earned. In 1982 Giacomo Bologna raised old-vine barbera in new French barriques and called the wine Bricco dell'Uccellone; it showed what concentration and oak could hang on that acid frame, and a generation of growers followed. In 2008 Barbera d'Asti was elevated to DOCG — the table wine become serious without losing the quality that made it loved: it goes with dinner.