A Barbera vineyard in the Monferrato area, Piedmont region, Italy.

I am not a great fan of total blind tastings but I do encourage partial blind tastings when there is a clear goal to be achieved. I recently organised one such event for a number of wine lovers to find out which out of four Barbera D’Alba wines, from different producers, was the favourite.

It was a relatively simple exercise. The participants were given a brief introduction on the grape and on the Piedmont region in Italy, where most of the worldwide production takes place, and were given a few suggestions as to what to look out for in terms of texture, flavour and composition. They were also given a short history of the various estates and producers.

This was followed by sessions with experienced wine drinkers, where the wines were served blind and were simply referred to as wine A, B, etc. The wines were put on display for the young wine drinkers as most of the producers that are not mainstream, are relatively unknown in Malta and therefore did not have much influence on the outcome.

All were given a scoring sheet and were encouraged to rank the wines from one to 20. Typical food from Piedmont was served throughout the sessions.

Barbera is one of my favourite Italian wines and one of the few European wines that are varietal based and influenced. Since the 1980s scandal – when some Piedmont producers were caught adding methanol to the wine in order to increase the natural deficiency of tannin and body in Barbera – most quality producers have been produc-ing very good, well-balanced wines, achieved mostly through barrique (oak) ageing and late harvesting.

Furthermore, Barbera is generally very well priced in relation to other important wines from this region. It is the third most planted variety in Italy (after Sangiovese and Montepulciano), with most vines planted in the warmer Asti region. However, Alba is probably more renowned worldwide.

Outside Piedmont, the variety is found all over the Italian peninsula, including Sicily, where it is generally known as Perricone. Some recent studies suggest that it is related to the French Mourvedre. May it could grow well in Malta too.

Returning to the tasting sessions, the four wines on test were the excellent, well-rounded Mario Marengo’s Pugnane 2009; the equally pleasant and enjoyable, soft styled, Sandrone 2007; the rather rustic Elio Altare 2008 and the less pleasing Marchesi di Barolo – Peiragal 2011.

In all, there were about 150 tasters of all ages, backgrounds and wine knowledge split into eight groups. Very interestingly, the result at the end of each session was very similar across the board.

The Sandrone and Marengo were the clear winners, amassing a total of 2,250 and 2,200 votes respectively. The other two fell way behind with less than 800 votes.

In the bigger picture of public opinion on spring hunting, gay adoption and citizenships for sale, votes like this do not carry much weight but they do show how a generous sample of Maltese wine lovers think.

mike@michaeltabone.com