Bruno Giacosa — A Legacy
There are very few stories in the world of wine that are more important to tell than that of Bruno Giacosa. A man’s legacy etched into lore, and with such gravitas that it is still felt today in his native Piemonte by almost all the producers in the region.
Usually, when a new brand joins the portfolio there is a mix of wariness and pride that comes from our other producers, none wanting to be outshone by the new entry. Exactly none of this transpired when I announced BG, instead I was met with a raft of our partners sharing their passion and individual experiences of great wines from Giacosa and experiences with the estate or Bruno himself. A couple even calling him their hero.
Born in 1929 in Neive where the winery remains, Bruno Giacosa spent his formative teenage years working with his father Carlo as a ‘commerciante’ or grape broker. This very important but often overlooked part of Giacosa’s history is perhaps the key to understanding his unrivalled ability to select fruit, even that which he hadn’t grown himself.
The family’s income at that time revolved solely around the ability to sell fruit to winemakers, and taking any fruit to Vinify themselves would have been a conflict of interest. In fact, his father so vehemently opposed the young Bruno’s intention to bottle his own wine in the early 1960’s, that he had to do so without the blessing of the family.
The first vintage wearing the label Bruno Giacosa was 1961, a single Barbaresco bottling from a mixture of vineyards as was custom at the time. It was the prominent wine author and critic Luigi Veronelli who at the time was crusading for Piedmont’s adoption of the French ‘cru’ classification of vineyard that convinced Giacosa to bottle and (importantly) label single vineyard wines soon after his first vintage. The first labelled cru bottling was the 1964 Barbaresco Vigna Santo Stefano, but it is possible that even the first wine used fruit exclusively from there.
While the obsession with site continued and strengthened throughout Bruno Giacosa’s career, so did the predilection to purchase fruit from growers rather than buy vineyards himself. Though Giacosa was not the only winemaker somewhat late to the party in buying land in the Langhe, it is regarded as his greatest missed opportunity. Some of Italy’s greatest wines ever were Giacosa’s red label bottlings from Santo Stefano di Neive, Villero and Collina Rionda, none of which are produced today by the estate.
Fortunately there were acquisitions in the 1980’s and 90’s of arguably the two finest sites in the Langhe, Asili in Barbaresco and Falletto in Barolo. More recently a small (0.5ha) holding of one of Barbaresco’s other ‘Grand Cru’ sites Rabaja has joined the stable of owned vineyards, however the estate continues to purchase grapes from long-time suppliers for their ‘Casa Vinicola’ range.
As I mentioned, it was Giacosa’s ability to select the best fruit that ensured he produced wines of far reaching fame. Unlike others and perhaps because he was not tied to specific vineyards of his own for so long, Giacosa was equally regarded as a brilliant producer of both Barbaresco and Barolo. Now, though it was not uncommon to find wineries in Barbaresco producing a Barolo - and vice versa - there are simply no other producers to date who made a relatively equal number of outstanding wines from both.
In vinous literacy, it is impossible to read about the Langhe without reading about Giacosa and his contemporary Angelo Gaja. While Gaja was a willing frontman for the region, Giacosa continued to toil in the background. Both leading from the front and each producing the region’s best
wines in the 60’s and 70’s, the two protagonists of the new Piedmont worked closely to grow the status of the region but the winemaking ethos of each started to dissociate with the advent of the ‘modernist’ methodology in the early 1970’s and as pursued by Gaja. Though not a staunch ‘traditionalist’, Giacosa is usually grouped into that classification. Such a basic association however can not possibly properly represent the transcendental nature of the wines produced here.
Giacosa was not without his idiosyncrasies it seems, and his famous and more recent decisions may have perplexed others at the time but only added to his mythology in the region. In both 2006 and 2010 he decided not to bottle any Barolo and instead sold his wine in bulk. The thought of a 2010 Falletto somewhere still on the market labelled under another producer and simply as ‘Barolo’ is profound, and just another part of his legend.
Today, the winery remains in family hands with Bruno’s daughter Bruna and his long-time protege Dante Scaglione as the winemaking consultant, though most of the winemaking duties are carried out by the very talented Giuseppe Tartaglino. Bruna’s utter professionalism and thoughtful approach resembles that which her father was so famous for, and I am so pleased she shares our values enough to warrant us representing the story of her and her father in Australia.
Though I have not had the fortune of tasting the wines over multiple decades of releases, I can attest to recent vintages as some of the most moving wines I have had the pleasure of drinking.
A NOTE, ON OUR NOTES
Out of respect for the late Bruno Giacosa, our notes on the individual wines focus almost solely on the terroir of their respective sites rather than any winemaking technique. Giacosa famously eschewed commentary about his winemaking practice, saying
“Winemaking involves a great many small decisions, each affecting the next. One can only hope to get them right, to capture what there was in the grapes to begin with”
I have not read two sentences which more aptly define a deft touch in the winery. Before terroir became a buzzword for any and every aspiring ‘fine wine’ estate, Giacosa embodied its true meaning perhaps without ever using the word itself.
Christian Canala