Pio Cesare Barolo Chinato NV

Profile & Story

Barolo Chinato is the traditional close to lunch or dinner in Piemonte, and Pio Cesare, the Alba house founded in 1881 and still run by the founding family, brought its own back in 2016 after a lapse of some sixty years, working from the family recipe that had been kept by Rosy Boffa, the founder's granddaughter. The base is the house's own Barolo Pio. An infusion of cinchona bark, China Calissaja and Succirubra, the source of quinine, is macerated for twenty-one days in a small quantity of that Barolo alongside a mixture of other herbs; after a light fining the infusion is aged four months in oak, bottled, and given at least two further months before it becomes Pio Cesare Barolo Chinato. Only very small volumes are made, alongside the house's Vermouth di Torino.