“Barolo, like any other wine, lives and dies, or ripens. Depending on its provenience, it ripens in four years, it gets better when it’s around six, in full shape until it’s ten-twelve years old. Then it slowly becomes older and older, losing its color and verve. The ripening of a wine could be compared to a man’s life.
When it’s rightly mellow Barolo loves company; it’s the time when it has to go to the table with his friends, roasts. Then it becomes more discreet and solitary, just like great persons, great artists. A bottle’s value doesn’t depend on its age, but on the year in which the wine was born! The wheather situation has a great influence on the vegetative cycle of vineyards. Every year corn, wheat, etc., though they can produce more or less cereal, give us an unchanging “polenta” or bread; vineyards instead can give a different wine every year. This is the reason of the search for perfect wines, extraordinary, the reason for high prices of bottles that contain wine produced in a year when the harvest ( i.e. the year in which it was produced) was extraordinary”.
taken out by “The Barolo as I feel”, M. Martinelli – ed. Sagittario
Wine vintage descprition 1968 – 2000
1868 – 1910
1911 – 1950
1951 – 1989
1990 – 2000
Massimo Martinelli
I was born near a river, the biggest Italian river, the Po, in a zone where it is already majestic ald solemn. Rivers have been signs and nests for civilisation. To me this is a great cultural honor because the ancient cultures were linked to the rivers, and events in history have often happened on water. Rivers have been ways for transports and commerce, and ideas also; from them I learned that things go, but they don't come back.
So I have a "liquid" sensibility, and I strongly prefer wine to water. I intensely study it. Either as a producer, in the Renato Ratti firm in Annunziata di La Morra, in the core of the land of Barolo, or in writing and talking (courses of wine-testing, of cooking); the titles of my books are well-known (perhaps because they are difficult to find): Wine-testing (Quaderni del Museo Ratti dei Vini di Alba 1975), Langhe cooking wine (edizioni Antoroto-Mondovì 1977). I also gather wine labels; my collection is very interesting. It is composed by around fifty thousand labels.
In the Langhe, in the land of Barolo I have found a very peaceful life.
Massimo Martinelli
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Sono nato in riva ad un fiume, il più grande fiume d'Italia, il Po, in un punto in cui è già maestoso ed imponente. I fiumi sono stati i segni e le culle della civiltà. Per me ciò costituisce un grande privilegio culturale essendo le antiche civiltà collegate ai fiumi, come le vicende dell'umanità che si sono svolte lungo i corsi d'acqua! I fiumi inoltre hanno permesso rapidità di scambi commerciali e di idee, per questo so che le cose vanno e non ritornano.
Ho quindi il senso "liquido" e preferisco decisamente il vino all'acqua. Ad esso infatti mi dedico con accanimento. Sia come produzione, nelle Cantine Renato Ratti all'Annunziata di La Morra, nel cuore del Barolo, sia con scritti o interventi divulgativi (corsi di degustazione, di conoscenza, di cucina), con titoli ormai prestigiosi (anche perché introvabili), quali La degustazione (Quaderni del Museo Ratti dei Vini di Alba 1975), Langhe cucina vino (edizioni Antoroto-Mondovì 1977). Ed ancora raccogliendo le etichette dei vini, oggetto di collezione che può essere considerata fra le più interessanti, con circa 50 mila esemplari.
Nelle Langhe, nelle terre del Barolo ho trovato una grande oasi di pace.
Massimo Martinelli
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