History

Vine cultivation in the Piedmont hills predates written records; Pliny the Elder mentioned wines from the area in the 1st century CE. But the decisive shaping of the landscape as a wine-producing zone began in the medieval period. By the 13th century, monastic communities and noble families in the Langhe hills were cultivating Nebbiolo — a notoriously difficult grape that produces wines of exceptional depth and longevity when grown in the calcareous-clay soils of the Serralunga, La Morra, and Barolo communes. The medieval castle system — towers and fortified residences visible across every ridge — was both a product of the territory’s agricultural wealth and its political fragmentation.

The modern wine identity of the Langhe was largely established in the 19th century, when Piedmontese oenologist Louis Oudart and later Camillo Benso di Cavour (the future architect of Italian unification) promoted a shift from sweet, partially fermented Nebbiolo wines toward the dry, fully fermented style that became modern Barolo. By the mid-19th century, Barolo — “the wine of kings and the king of wines” — was being shipped to the courts of Europe. In Asti and Canelli, parallel traditions produced Moscato d’Asti (sweet sparkling wine) and the great underground wine cellars (cantine sotterranee) carved entirely in stone beneath Canelli’s hillside town, some extending 30 meters deep and dating to the 18th century.

The 20th century brought both crisis and transformation. Post-WWII rural depopulation threatened the maintenance of the steep, terraced vineyards, but rising international demand for Barolo and Barbaresco from the 1980s onward reversed the decline. The “Barolo Wars” of the 1980s–1990s — a generational conflict between traditionalist and modernist winemakers over maceration times, barrel size, and stylistic direction — put the Langhe on the global fine wine map. Today the landscape is under pressure from wine tourism, but its agricultural character remains dominant.