Italy’s magnificent red, Barolo, is coming of age — not that it wasn’t well known in the past. The earliest Barolo dates back to the end of the 18th century. However, a string of excellent vintages and a vast improvement in viticulture and winemaking in the last two decades have created more great wine producers and more great wines.

“We make much more friendly wines than we did 20 or 30 years ago,” admits Paolo Damilano, whose family — the biggest producer from the area’s top vineyard, Cannubi —makes excellent Barolos under their name. “Our Barolos are much more approachable and drinkable when young. They are more like Burgundy.”

“Piedmont is one of Europe’s greatest wine regions,” says John Kapon, CEO of Acker Merrall & Condit, the oldest wine merchant in the U.S., “and great Barolos are unique and special wines, on par with the top French wines.” Yet the market is only beginning to reflect this, and so the wines remain affordable — for now. “Burgundy is the second largest wine market after Bordeaux but growing quite significantly,” notes Jeff Zacharia, president of wine auctioneer Zachys, in Scarsdale, New York. Given that Barolo is “growing but is starting from a much lower point than Burgundy,” there has never been a better time to buy, drink, and collect it.

VILLAGES AND VINEYARDS

“Barolo can be complicated to know and understand,” Kapon says. “There are so many great vineyards and winemakers. They are unique and special, and collectors worldwide recognize this.” There are many parallels between Barolo and Burgundy. One of the most obvious is the importance of villages and single vineyards. Besides Barolo itself, the wine’s top towns include La Morra, Serralunga, and Monforte d’Alba. Furthermore, each village, whether in Barolo or Burgundy, has particular vineyard sites that grow the highest quality grapes and produce the best wines. Most top Barolos carry single-vineyard designations on their labels, such as Brunate or Cannubi. The French have codified this into an appellation system. Barolo has no official vineyard anking, but such vineyards as Brunate near La Morra and Cannubi in Barolo have long been considered the region’s finest. “There are many excellent small vineyards for Barolo but the very best are well known,” says Bruno Ceretto, whose family is a top producer of Barolo and other wines of the region. “We are lucky enough to own parts of many of them including Cannubi and Rocche.”

TOP WINERIES

A number of wineries and growers may share ownership of a vineyard. The vineyard of Cannubi, for instance, has almost two dozen individual grape growers and almost as many different wine producers using the name. Granted, nothing is as complicated as Burgundy, with such appellations as Clos Vougeot, which includes almost 70 different owners, but Barolo has similar complexity that takes some time to understand. For those new to collecting, it is easier to focus on the best producers with long reputations for making top wines. Some excellent wineries to consider that are readily available are Ceretto, Pio Cesare, Aldo Conterno, Giacomo Conterno, Bruno Giacosa, Luciano Sandrone, Paolo Scavino, and Roberto Voerzio. Angelo Gaja is also a great producer of reds from the Barolo area, but the winery labels its best wines under the appellation Langhe Doc. His two top wines from the area are Conteisa and Sperss.

VINTAGES TO WATCH FOR

Choosing the best vintages in Barolo is less difficult. Every year after 1995 is outstanding. In fact, Barolo hasn’t had a poor vintage overall since 2002. “Barolo has had so many excellent vintages in the last 15 years that it’s almost a problem,” admits Matteo Einaudi of Luigi Einaudi, whose Cannubi Barolo is top-tier. I am a fan of warmer, sunnier vintages that produce rounder textured and richer Barolos. These years include 1997, 2000, and 2007. I also like sunny, fresh, and late grape-growing seasons that make more balanced wines. These vintages include 1996, 1998, and 2008. Colder years produce more more tannic wines, as in 1999 and 2006, which need more bottle age to soften and become drinkable. Older vintages to keep an eye out for are: 1978, 1982, 1985, 1989, and 1990. These show how Barolo ages wonderfully and approaches great Burgundy as it matures.

A GROWING AUDIENCE

“Italy has done a great job marketing itself as a brand throughout Asia for style, fashion, wine, and food,” Kapon says. “Italian wines, and Barolo specifically, are among the beneficiaries. Our collectors in Hong Kong want to add the top Barolo producers to their collections, older and more recent vintages alike.” Both Kapon and Zacharia, however, note that the U.S. market has been growing consistently for more than five years and that South American collectors have also been laying in Barolos recently. “Demand for Barolo is becoming increasingly global,” says Kapon.

THE ALLURE OF PROVENANCE

The top names for collectors and investors in Barolos (not including Gaja because technically it doesn’t make one) are: Aldo Conterno Giacomo Conterno, Bruno Giacosa, Bartolo Mascarello, and Roberto Voerzio. When buying at auction, provenance — as well as winery and vintage — can be a factor. “Owing to Barolo’s not being widely collected in the U.S. before the late 1990s,” Zacharia says, “Barolo rarities tend to appear as part of truly great cellars that were amassed over decades, rather than a case here, a case there showing up at auction.” Bottles from such collections are likely to fetch higher prices than ones with lesser-known backgrounds. For example, the highest price Zachys has ever realized for a single bottle of Barolo Monfortino Riserva Speciale Giacomo Conterno 1961 was $1,680 in November 2009. It was auctioned as part of the Big Guy Collection, an extraordinarily strong group that spanned several auctions. Since that time, bottles of the same wine have earned from as low as around $650 to as high as $1,220, but have never achieved quite the same price.