Chiara Boschis: "We were proud to be farmers, but we wanted to be new farmers, earn consideration ... [+]
Chiara Boschis — winery owner, winemaker, revolutionary — began fighting her particular insurgency to lift the plight of the farmer in the Piedmont provence of northwest Italy in the early ‘80s. She was 29 years old. Three decades on, Boschis and now more than 20 other women in what was perhaps the most provincial of Italy’s wine states, have lifted up one of the greatest wine regions of the world.
Piemonte, as the Italians call it, boasts the deep-flavored Nebbiolo grape, that is used to make Barolo and Barberesco. The wines from these small zones in the Langhe have been known for their long life and their high prices. The prices are still relatively steep (but not in comparison to counterparts from the more well-known Bordeaux or Napa Valley). And while Barolos and Barberescos are viable 20 and 30 years out, the women of Piemonte – by introducing modern vineyard and cellar practices – are producing wines with more elegance, and wines that can be consumed sooner.
Chaira Boschis, now 59, is one of the women in the forefront of that evolution.
I visited Boschis’ E. Pira & Figli winery in the midst of the 2019 harvest last September. From a surprisingly hidden-in-plain sight building just as one ascends the village of Barolo, Boschis has guests from Scandinavia and California enthralled; me included.
She’s a dynamo and her passion (an over-used word in the wine world) is immediate and genuine. Flailing arms and hands are in gesticulation as she tells her story of how she came to take over the business as the only woman to operate a winery in Piemonte; and by intention, reformed a region. She changed the farming practices in Barolo to produce smaller crops, by introducing cellar techniques, all to improve the wines. As important, and by her actions, winegrowers began seeing their earnings increase; and their dignity elevated.
2016 E. Pira Mosconi
And more lastingly, she and the other women — who began taking over from their entrenched and sometimes moribund father’s wineries – she tells me, “Earned the respect of other producers.”
Chiara Boschis’s E. Pira winery controls 11 hectares – or about 27 acres – which produce 6,500 cases a year. She makes Barolo Nebbiolo – from only 10 acres that go into her best wines, produced from a quintet of vineyard blocks. (Only Nebbiolo from the Barolo zone can be labeled Barolo.) She took over the winery in 1981 and made her first wine nine years later. Her usual regimen is to grow her grapes organically, and to use only about one-third new oak barrels, while the rest is fermented in second- and three-time used vessels; resulting in wines that hardly show traces of oak. But they do manifest in what I love in Italian wines: Modernity balanced with rusticity; that is, they have wonderful bright fruit upfront with an underlayment of leathery, dried fruit on the palate, and lasting, softening tannins.
The 2014 Barolo Via Nuova for instance ($85 est.), is dark purple with wonderful saddle leather and a backbone of smoke and dark dried fruit. The wine is so balanced. Hold for a couple of years and drink it over the ensuing 15. Alcohol: 14%.
The 2016 Barolo Mosconi ($95 est.)) is so perfume-y in the nose with warm, soft dark red fruit. It is showing great power and balance and will go wonderfully with meats and Bolognese sauce. Hold it for two years and drink over the next 25. Alcohol: 14.5%.
After 30 years, Boschis is well-established, while she’s helped to launch Piemonte and its Barolos and Barberescos onto a wider world stage.
“I was the only girl back then in a male dominated world so I had to work harder to earn consideration from other winemakers,” as she relates to me the oft-told plight of “the other”.
“About 10 years later, the new generation of girls were getting ready to take the torch, in their families.”
Chiara Boschis: "I was the only girl back then in a male dominated world so I had to work harder to ... [+]
"My generation is the 'Mayflower' generation; the first to come back after WWII. (But) after the war there was strong emigration toward abroad or big cities; young people abandoned completely the countryside. My parent’s generation encouraged us to leave (too) and have a better life. ... That’s why they did a lot of sacrifices to send us to school; from no education to graduation in one generation. This is why me and my friends started to feel the need of a revenge and a renaissance of the farmers’ social category.”
By which she means the effort to raise the farmer’s image and plight to a higher and more respectable class. She, along with a group of young men, who came back and stayed after the war, became known as “The Barolo Boys”. It’s an ironic title, given that there she is – on the poster for a 2014 film made of the group of men — the only woman.
“The revolution involved the introduction of new ideas as reducing crops; cleaning up and making beautiful, efficient cellars; vinifying impurities; (producing) single, great "Crus" (high quality wines), which … gave the growers the opportunity to better sell the wines. The wines were so good that customers arrived soon (more often),” she explains. “The great innovation was the idea of working together and sharing and helping each other. It was a reciprocal improvement — a cultural revolution that introduced cooperation instead of competition between us bunch of growers and winemakers.
“We were proud to be farmers, but we wanted to be new farmers, earn consideration and respect. In the past, farmers were the last step on the social scale and we wanted to change it. We are the guardians of the natural world … the revolution is almost completed!”
