Produttori del Barbaresco was founded in 1958, when the local priest Don Fiorino Marengo brought together nineteen small growers under a single cooperative, inspired by Domizio Cavazza's pioneering 1894 Cantine Sociali di Barbaresco. The idea was simple and, for its time, radical: pool the fruit, pay members for quality rather than quantity, and bottle only Barbaresco. Today the cooperative counts around 53 member families farming approximately 120 hectares of Nebbiolo across the commune, roughly one sixth of the entire Barbaresco DOCG. Each grower is responsible for their own vineyard; the cooperative's role is to vinify what they bring in with as little intervention as possible, so that the character of each site, rather than any single winemaker's hand, is what ends up in the glass. In the finest vintages only, the cooperative separates out fruit from nine historic single-vineyard sites and releases them as individual Riservas, a practice it pioneered in Barbaresco and has followed with remarkable consistency since 1967.

A mild winter left water reserves in excellent shape ahead of a dry growing season, and a cool spring gave way to a warm, largely dry summer, interrupted only by a localised hailstorm in early August. Yields came in naturally low, around 10% down on 2020, and cooler September nights set up a clean harvest from 6 to 18 October, with smaller berries and high polyphenolic concentration, the kind of season that produces structured, age-worthy Barbaresco.

A vintage with new hands on it. Luca Cravanzola personally oversaw this Riserva's bottling last May, before formally taking over as Managing Director. It's his first release at the helm, and by early critic accounts, one of the cooperative's strongest in years.