My trip to Barbaresco to taste the new 2015 vintage last month was dominated by one topic only: rain. For more than a month it had rained so much that producers had been unable to enter their vineyards with tractors. Spraying copper and sulphur to ward off fungal disease and cutting rampant weeds on Barolo and Barbaresco’s slippery clay slopes could be done only on foot, which means much-increased man-hours and cost.
The weather was forecast to improve only at the end of June and several producers expressed their concern that they could have another 2014 on their hands, the...