Pertinace

A measured hand in Treiso

Cesare Barbero keeps the cellar line restrained as Director and winemaker at Pertinace in the Langhe, where Barbaresco remains the work’s center of gravity. He directs the winery founded by his father, Mario Barbero, in 1973, carrying a Traditional Piedmont approach that favors varietal purity, classic elegance, and minimal manipulation. The house itself is cooperative in structure, shaped by 20 business partners and friends rather than by a single estate myth, and that matters in the glass: Treiso is not treated as an image but as a working appellation, parcel by parcel, partner by partner. Barbero’s position is practical, not nostalgic. He has said, “Standing still would mean losing touch with reality.” At Pertinace, that sentence reads like a cellar rule. The predecessor remains present through the founding act; the current hand is measured against continuity and the market at once.

Large casks in cool half-light

The method at Pertinace begins with scale, then narrows toward site. Members work 90 hectares of vineyards across Treiso, Barbaresco, Alba, Neviglie, Piobesi d’Alba, Magliano Alfieri, and Agliano Terme, giving the cellar a broad Langhe and Piedmontese vocabulary. Barbaresco DOCG anchors the program, with Nervo, Marcarini, and Castellizzano carrying the more precise language of cru and MGA. In the production and refining areas, tall stainless-steel tanks sit against aisles of wooden casks holding 40 to 105 hectolitres, where ageing takes place in cool, quiet half-light. The portfolio moves beyond Nebbiolo into Dolcetto d’Alba, Moscato d’Asti, Langhe Nebbiolo, Barbera d’Alba, Langhe Arneis, Alta Langa, Barbera d’Asti, Barolo, and distillates from Moscato, Barbaresco, and Dolcetto. Barbero’s newer work includes a white Arneis in a half-litre format, with a new graphic design and a more immediate concept aimed at major US distribution chains. He has called it “an important project because it is aimed at enhancing the quality cooperative world.”

The vineyard comes into the cellar

The place sits in Località Pertinace, a hilltop address in Treiso surrounded by Langhe vineyards, and the hospitality keeps that landscape close to the work. The tasting room does not float apart from production; visitors move between vineyard, cellar, and barrel room, with the cellar’s steel and large wood setting the tempo. The house presents itself with a “pop soul,” a phrase that could sound light if the bottles were not so firmly tied to Barbaresco. Here it softens the threshold. The room is conversational, friendly, and down to earth, with the cooperative’s collective identity visible in the way the winery talks about friendship, memory, and making people feel at home.

A cooperative line, still moving

Pertinace matters most when its breadth does not blur its discipline. A large cooperative can drift toward anonymity; Barbero instead keeps the language fixed on Treiso, on Barbaresco, and on the named vineyards that let difference remain legible. The next movement is already concrete, not abstract: the half-litre Arneis project carries the same cooperative argument into another format, while Nervo and Marcarini continue to hold the bench for Barbaresco.