Already at the beginning of the latest century the winemakers of Barolo and Barbaresco felt the need to come together to protect their productions: in 1908 they asked for the creation of a certificate of origin issued by an association that was operating under the control of the provincial administration and the wine trade union of Piedmont. But only in 1924 the Italian Parliament issued the law on typical wines and settled that their characteristics should be constant and defined by statutes of consortia.
In this way the preparatory work for the establishment of the Consortium for the Defense of typical wines of Barolo and Barbaresco began, officially founded in 1934 with the task of defining the context of production (the area of origin, the grapes and the wine’s characteristics etc.), monitoring against fraud, adulteration and unfair competition, promoting knowledge of wines, as well as defending name and quality in the most appropriate locations. After the break dictated by the war, the Consortium was reconstituted in 1947. In 1963 the law n° 930 was enacted, which sanctioned the birth of protected designations of origin and defined the exact role of consortia.
From its outset, the Consortium of Alba worked for the recognition of the Doc for Barolo and Barbaresco, which occurred in 1966, and later for that of the DOCG, granted in 1980. In 1984, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry entrusted officially the Consortium the task of supervision of the production of the two excellent red wines. In 1994, following the issuing of the new law on designation of origin of wines, the n° 164 of 1992, the ancient institution of protection was turned into the current Consortium for the Protection of Barolo Barbaresco Alba Langhe and Roero, expanding its expertise to all designation produced exclusively in Langhe and Roero area. Today, therefore, the body is set up as a consortium of territory and not only of designation.
The protection exerted on the wines of the Langhe and Roero was completed between 2007 and 2009, when the Ministry gave the Consortium the task to carry out Control Checks on all the DOCG and DOC within its jurisdiction. In this way not only Barolo and Barbaresco, but also Dogliani, Roero, Roero Arneis, Barbera d’Alba, Dolcetto (in its various types), Langhe, Nebbiolo d’Alba and Verduno Pelaverga are fully guaranteed in terms of traceability. The European Union does not recognize the consortium structure and then, every three years, producers have to entrust a certification body the action of control paid by themselves in accordance with the ministerial tables.
For the period from 2009 to 2012, the Council of Administration of the Consortium has entrusted the task to the Valoritalia company that operates on the whole national territory and that agreed the maximum sharing of data collected in order to publish regular bulletins available to the Companes and the Press. The internationalization of the markets that characterizes the new millennium actually queries the productive reality of Piedmont and obligates the institutions that represent it to plan for the future in a socio–economic context that is continuously changing.
The choice of the production tradition and of a territorial identity remains undisputed, but must necessarily deal with the prospects posed by the new European policy, the so–called OCM–Community Organization of the Wine Market, and with the increasingly diverse needs of buyers, not only European or American, but also with emerging countries such as Asia or eastern Europe, carriers of different cultural habits and attitudes.
