The Unbearable Lightness of Roero

About ten years ago, at the beginning of my life in Singapore, I hosted a dinner for two dear friends, a couple originally from India. I love cooking, and though my skills at the time were nowhere near what they are now, I spent quite some time putting together a solid home-cooked meal. And since I wanted to really impress them, I decided to decant a bottle of Barolo Prunotto I had been saving for a while, brought over from Europe.

Mind you, I am from Florence, so my go-to wine until that time had always been Sangiovese (remember the article on Anfiteatro?), so I was used to a deep ruby, dense, and familiar nectar. I had never really paid attention to Barolo, though I had it once or twice before.
So I pour it into the decanter, and I immediately notice the colour: lighter than I expected, noticeably so. I give it a sniff, and the bouquet is solid, complex even, which only confuses me more. How can it smell this good if it looks like that? I put it aside, hoping for the best, and went back to cooking.

Later in the evening, when the main course arrives, I bring out the decanter – let’s assume I made quite a scene of it – and pour a little into my glass to check. And I was, for some reason, incredibly disappointed. Too light, I thought. No body. Either this wine is wildly overrated, or something has gone wrong with it.

So I apologized to my guests, and in front of their shocked eyes, poured the entire contents of the decanter down the sink.
If this were a movie, that scene would have been shot in slow motion: their voices distorted, hands reaching out, mouths forming a long, anguished "Noooooooo!!"

Let’s be honest, the wine was probably fine. Or maybe it was an off bottle, maybe the vintage was difficult, maybe I simply had no frame of reference for how Nebbiolo looks in the glass compared to the Sangiovese I grew up with. Either way, I didn't stop to ask those questions. I just decided, on the spot, that Barolo was not for me.

And I didn't buy another bottle for nearly ten years. Which, as it turns out, is a fairly expensive way to develop a grudge.
This article is my attempt to settle it.

Italy Is Not One Country

Before we get to Piedmont specifically, it helps to zoom out for a moment.
Italy produces wine across every one of its twenty regions. From the Alpine valleys of Alto Adige in the north to the sun-baked volcanic plains of Sicily in the south, the diversity of climate, geology, and indigenous grape varieties is staggering and unmatched anywhere in the world. I've written about this before in the context of Veneto, Tuscany, and Apulia, and the same pattern holds everywhere: behind every famous name is a much larger story that most people never get to.
The practical consequence of this is that many of Italy's most interesting wines go by names that don't register internationally, and not because they aren't excellent, but because the market never gave them the same promotional push. And nowhere is this more true than in Piedmont.

The Kingdom of Wine

Piedmont sits in the northwestern corner of Italy, tucked between the Alps and the Apennines, and it has been producing wine of ambition for a very long time. What shaped it differently from other Italian regions is something that doesn't get mentioned often enough. It is its relationship with power.

For centuries, Piedmont was the heartland of the House of Savoy, the royal dynasty that eventually unified Italy in the 19th century. The Savoy court was sophisticated, outward-looking, and deeply influenced by French culture, including French winemaking. This wasn't just aesthetic: it had direct consequences for how wine was produced and understood in the region. Producers had access to royal patronage, scientific exchange with French oenologists, and an aristocratic clientele that demanded and rewarded quality. It's roughly the same mechanism that elevated Bordeaux and Burgundy (and France in general): proximity to power concentrates ambition.
The result is a region that many serious wine people consider the finest in Italy. That's a contested claim, and Tuscany would have something to say about it (my hands are shaking). Still, there's no question that Piedmont punches at the very top.

Now, to be clear, I have zero affection and sympathy for the Savoy court. Its contribution to winemaking does not clear the Italian nobility of their responsibility in some genuinely catastrophic chapters, not least their role in enabling fascism in the early 20th century. People and institutions can have an outsized positive impact in one area while being completely disastrous in others.

The Grapes You Should Know

Piedmont's indigenous varieties are numerous, but a few deserve particular attention.

Nebbiolo is the prestige grape: thin-skinned, late-ripening, very demanding of its terroir, and capable of producing wines of extraordinary complexity and longevity. It is the grape behind Barolo, Barbaresco, and Roero, three DOCG denominations that, despite sharing the same variety, produce wines that taste remarkably different from one another. High tannin, pronounced acidity, aromas of rose, dried cherry, and tobacco. Not an easy grape to love young, but one that rewards patience like almost nothing else in Italian wine. Something I did not have at the time.

Barbera is – at its core – the everyday workhorse of Piedmont, and the grape that locals have always drunk, rather than saved. It covers more ground in the region than any other variety. Deep colour, very high acidity, low tannin: it's a grape built for food, for the table, for Tuesday nights as much as Saturday dinners. As such, it was dismissed as simple for many years, though luckily that reputation is now outdated, and I can assure you that if treated right (and with the right terroir), Barbera produces wines of real depth and character.

Arneis is something different entirely, and an excellent discovery for me: a white grape, native to the Roero hills, which was nearly extinct by the 1970s before a handful of producers brought it back. Floral, delicate, with notes of pear and white flowers and a freshness that makes it an excellent aperitivo wine. It is also, quietly, one of the most food-friendly whites in northern Italy.

There are others worth knowing, such as Dolcetto and Albarossa, the latter a rare crossing that produces rich, deeply coloured reds with impressive structure; but we’ll talk about them another time perhaps.

Barolo vs Roero

Both Barolo and Roero are made from Nebbiolo, they’re DOCG denominations, and sit in the province of Cuneo, so close that you can see one side from the other on a clear day. And yet the wines are different in ways that go well beyond nuance.

The difference starts with the river Tanaro, which flows between the two zones. On the left bank sits the Langhe; this is the territory that produces Barolo and Barbaresco, with compact clay and limestone soils, rolling hills of pretty good elevation, and a microclimate that pushes Nebbiolo to its most powerful, structured expression. Barolo wines are built for time by design: in fact, the regulations require a minimum of three years ageing before release (five for Riserva), and even then, the top wines benefit from a decade or more in the cellar. They are not wines you open casually.

On the right bank sits the Roero; sandy, lighter soils of marine origin, lower in clay, higher in limestone and sand. The same Nebbiolo here produces wines that are noticeably different: earlier-drinking, more aromatic, with softer tannins and a freshness that makes them far more approachable in youth.
Now, this is where it is important to be clear: this Nebbiolo is not a lesser version of Barolo, but rather a different interpretation of the same grape, made possible by a different terroir.

So, what does this mean?
If you want something to open tonight with dinner, Roero is usually the smarter choice.
If you're buying to put away for five years, Barolo makes sense.
But if you've been buying Barolo because you've assumed it's simply the best Nebbiolo available, it's worth questioning that assumption. This is known as label shopping, and it’s one of the most common and expensive habits (particularly in Singapore), often due to strong marketing practices and the resulting perception of what is valuable.
Piedmont, with its wealth of denominations and styles, is one of the best places to break it.

What We Bring from Piedmont

At TerraVino, our Piedmont selection comes from Teo Costa, a family winery based in Castellinaldo d'Alba in the Roero. Their story deserves a full article and will get one, but the short version is this: founded in the late 1800s, now in its fifth generation, 80 hectares spread across Roero, Langhe, and Monferrato. Large enough to work across multiple denominations and indigenous varieties, disciplined enough to treat each parcel individually. They were also the first winery in Piedmont to develop a no-added-sulphites vinification method, back in 2007, well before it became trendy.

You can browse the range we carry here, but I’d like to point you to some special bottles:

Vitidautunno Roero Arneis DOCG
The white that Roero built its identity around. Pear, white flowers, a faint almond note, and more structure on the palate than its lightness suggests. One of the better aperitivo whites we carry, and excellent with seafood.

Vitidautunno Barbera Appassimento DOC
This was an instant favourite for me, and our customers really appreciate it.
It’s a Barbera taken somewhere unexpected: grapes harvested overripe or lightly dried (appassimento), producing a wine that is deep, warm, silky, and spiced. At 15% it's not subtle, and it ages well beyond a decade. If you've written off Barbera as an everyday grape, this is the bottle that changes things.

Di Costa in Costa Roero DOCG
100% Nebbiolo from the Batajot hillside, same grape as Barolo but from the right bank of the Tanaro. Raspberry, rose, firm tannins, a spicy finish. More approachable than its Langhe counterpart and significantly more honest about what Nebbiolo actually tastes like before you add prestige to the equation.

Monroj Barolo DOCG
Produced from the cru "I Merli" in Novello, between Barolo and Monforte d'Alba, this is one of those bottles that need a decade of patience, and gives you everything after that: dried rose, dark cherry, leather, and a finish that goes on long enough to make you reconsider any grudge you might have been holding (that would be me).
Consider it the full stop at the end of a very long sentence.

The Bigger Point

Like many other places in Italy, Piedmont is not a one-wine region, and it never was! Behind the name Barolo sits an entire landscape of varieties, denominations, and producers making wines of real interest at prices that don't require a special occasion to justify opening a bottle.
The best reason to explore Roero is not that Barolo is expensive (though it often is); but rather that it is that different terroir and the same grape produce a genuinely different experience. And the difference is an interesting one, not at all a compromise.

So, don’t always stick to the same old stuff: discovery is a wonderful journey!
Next time you reach for the familiar label, ask yourself whether you want the reputation or the wine.
You’ll find that they're often not the same thing.