Press release

The official Awards Ceremony, which was held on Tuesday, December 12th at The Hotel La Bollina of Serravalle Scrivia (AL), marked the end of the 2nd International Barbera Competition. This competition was supported by The Chamber of Commerce of Alessandria in collaboration with the Piedmont Region, the Province and the Foundation Savings and Loan Company of Alessandria.

The judging occurred in Alessandria on November 15-18, 2006, and the judges were composed mainly of enology technicians and others represented by journalists and large international distributors. The expert tasters judged 305 wines, two-thirds of which originated from Piedmont, the origin of the Barbera grape, and the area in which it finds its various expressions. The rest of the participants came from numerous other Italian DOC’s that use Barbera grapes in their products and from foreign countries, in particular California and Australia where Barbera is acquiring greater exposure.

The judges were very selective as they gave awards to 24% of the participating wines. Seventy-four wines received scores of 85 or more on a 100 point scale and therefore received the ‘Diploma Monferrato Festival’. Worthy of note is the fact that 13 foreign wines exceeded the minimum number of points which demonstrates an increasing quality of foreign-produced Barbera.

The final tasting session, which was conducted on the best wines of each category, resulted in the following winners:
· Best Barbera of 2006 and gold medal in category 1 which is composed of DOC wines containing at least 85% Barbera grapes. This wine is PAION 2004, Barbera d’Asti Superiore produced by Tenuta La Fiammenga from Cioccaro di Penango (AT).
· Gold medal winner in category 2 which is composed of DOC wines containing at least 50% Barbera grapes. This wine is GUTTURNIO FRIZZANTE 2005, a wine from Colli Piacentini produced by Az. Agr. Baraccone from Ponte dell’Olio (PC).
· Gold medal winner in category 4 which is composed of foreign wines containing at least 50% Barbera grapes. This wine is Barbera ReZerve 2004, produced by Shenandoah Vineyards in Plymouth, California.

The Awards Ceremony, which saw the participation of over 200 influential people – producers and invited journalists –, began with recognition of the winners of the Alessandria wines judging held during the 32nd edition of the Marengo Competition DOC. Later in the evening, producers whose wines received 85 or more points on a 100 point scale were given the ‘Diploma Monferrato Festival’. Following this presentation, medals were given to producers of wines with the highest scores.