On our recent trip to Italy, we tried to visit all the primary wine villages of the Barolo and Barbaresco wine regions. On our first visit to the village of Barolo, we came across the crushing of grapes on a narrow main street.

The crush that we watched was outside the ground floor of the Borgogno winery.

We were fascinated that the full winery existed in such a small space in the very center and top of the village. We made an appointment to come back for a winery tour.

Our knowledgeable guide gave us a great tour through the 300 year old winery and barrel rooms.

I was enthralled as this winery was hundreds of years older than any I had toured. In every direction there was history, but also new advances in wine making.

Perhaps the most interesting to me was the barrel room. Our tour guide explained that the barrels all had to be built inside this below ground cellar. There were no doorways or stairs or entrances big enough to bring down a finished barrel.

As we traversed a maze of barrel rooms with many levels deep under the town of Barolo, we came to a very large and very old barrel.

Our guide shared that the barrel was over 100 years old and was still used to age the Barbara wines that are produced. Indeed the barrel was full of that years wine harvest.

Like with the Burzi winery (just ten miles away), the test of the grape crush and the wine making would come in the tasting room.

I couldn’t resist. I had to taste a complete range of the Borgogno wines including the oldest that they had to offer. We were so delighted with the wonderful wines that we accepted their invitation to try another wine, and then go up to the rooftop plaza.

Wherever we looked from the rooftop, we could see one of the nearby Borgogno vineyards. In addition we overlooked the Museum of wine in Barolo.

As we sipped our Barolo Nebbiolo wines, we couldn’t believe that in a single day we had experienced a 250 year old winery (Borgogno) and a ten year old winery (Burzi). Their traditions were very different. But their Barolo wines will draw us back to this historic wine region of kings.