«A most select position»: thirty vintages of Cerequio

On April 9 and 10, 2026, at Palás Cerequio in La Morra, international press and sommeliers tasted their way through all thirty vintages of Barolo DOCG Cerequio for the first time. The event was built around a complete vertical tasting – from the earliest bottles to the 2022 preview – and a dinner that turned wine into storytelling.

“A most select position,” wrote Lorenzo Fantini in 1880 in his Monograph on Viticulture in the Province of Cuneo. Today, arriving from La Morra and looking south, you see a broad, orderly basin: a natural amphitheatre that gathers light and holds it throughout the day. Cerequio is one of Barolo’s most legible landscapes, and perhaps one of its most instructive: within just a few curves lie the geology, exposure and sense of proportion that define the denomination.

The name Cerequio appears as early as 1516, in a document defining the borders between La Morra and Barolo. The place name has travelled through the centuries together with the landscape itself: a regular basin, protected from the winds, with gentle slopes and the hamlet at its centre. The amphitheatre opens southward, receiving constant light and maintaining a balanced microclimate – ideal for Nebbiolo.

The soils belong to the Tortonian formation, among the oldest in the Barolo area. The high presence of magnesium – five times above average – is one of Cerequio’s most distinctive traits, almost symbolic in nature: a determining element that contributes to tannic precision and long-term stability, two qualities that clearly define the wine’s profile.

When Michele Chiarlo put down roots here in 1988, the intention was clear – and it is the same one that still guides the estate today: to build a geography of wine based on vineyards of absolute value. Within this vision, Cerequio represented the apex of an ideal triangle with Cannubi and La Court. Since that first 1988 vintage, we have produced Barolo DOCG Cerequio only in exceptional years, in limited quantities and released by allocation.

Cerequio has an issue of C.R.U all to itself: read the full version of this article by browsing the magazine online.

On April 9 and 10, 2026, at Palás Cerequio in La Morra, these thirty vintages came together for the first time. International press and sommeliers experienced the complete vertical: from the earliest bottles to the 2022 preview, including the six Riserva vintages – among them the 2019 preview. It was a journey that allowed Cerequio to be read in full, vintage by vintage, letting each wine speak in its own voice without overshadowing the others.

That evening, the Cerequio Dinner turned the vertical tasting into a story told at the table: two emerging chefs, working four hands, with each course built around a different expression of Cerequio. A format that respected the nature of the place – the vineyard at the centre, the wine as the measure – without reducing it to a backdrop.

The thirty vintages gathered over these decades tell the story of a shared journey: a hill changing with time, and time settling into the hill. To observe them together is to follow a thread that connects seasons, choices and identity – a thread that, vintage after vintage, has given Cerequio an increasingly defined voice.