Pico Maccario Lavignone Barbera d'Asti 2022

Profile & Story

Pico Maccario is a Barbera specialist based in Mombaruzzo, in the heart of Piedmont's Barbera d'Asti DOCG. The brand was created in 1997 by brothers Pico and Vitaliano Maccario, whose family had sold grapes to other producers for four generations before launching their own label; the estate now farms 70 contiguous hectares, 60 of them planted to Barbera. Lavignone, the winery's icon wine, takes its name from an 18th-century farmhouse on the property and comes from a single 54-hectare block, the largest contiguous Barbera cru in existence. The vines are Guyot-trained on a west-to-southwest-facing slope at 180 meters above sea level, on hillside soils of Pleistocene fluvial origin. Harvest takes place in September, once the grapes reach full ripeness and a balance of sugar and acidity; the fruit is destemmed and gently crushed, then vinified in temperature-controlled stainless steel at 28-30°C with 10-12 days of maceration, with frequent punch-downs and pump-overs, before further aging in steel and bottle ahead of release.