The 2021 Barbera d'Alba offers the dark juicy fruit that has made this native grape so popular in local restaurants. The wine shows the heft and texture to pair with meat or cheese-heavy dishes, and it has the natural acidity to keep the palate refreshed throughout your meal. This is a youthful and versatile entry-level red. Cascina delle Rose does an especially good job with this wine. Production is 3,500 bottles.

Another nice and accessibly priced Barbera from this estate, the Cascina delle Rose 2019 Barbera d'Alba offers a pure expression of the grape with bright cherry and cassis. The fruit is tart, fresh and characterized by lots of fresh and food-friendly acidity. This is a terrific wine to pair with a hearty dish of ravioli stuffed with cheese and spinach. About 4,500 bottles were released.

Here is a comparably food-friendly red wine to pair with simple roast meats or risotto with wild mushrooms. The Cascina delle Rose 2018 Barbera d'Alba is an easier wine when contrasted with the Barbera d'Alba Superiore Donna Elena from 2017 that I also tasted in this report. Yet this wine does not show that jammy ripeness that you get in the Superiore and ultimately shows more balance as a result. There is some softness with dried blackberry and Morello cherry, but the cooler 2018 vintage manages those aromas with more precision and a softer touch. Some 4,500 bottles were released.

Tasted from barrel, the 2017 Barbera d'Alba opens to a darkly concentrated appearance with lots of succulent primary fruit. At this very young point in the wine's life, it offers lots of rich syrupy black fruit flavors with cured tobacco and faded tones of campfire ash. It will be interesting to see where the next couple of months of bottle aging will bring it. Some 5,600 bottles were produced.

Showing dark and ripe fruit nuances, the 2016 Barbera d'Alba is a chewy and succulent wine that is packed tight with black fruit flavors. This was a relatively cool vintage, but despite that fact, you are treated to a brief moment of cherry sweetness on the close.