Piedmont wine says goodbye to one of its great pioneers: Michele Chiarlo has passed away at age 88

Wine Piedmont says goodbye to one of its great pioneers: Michele Chiarlo, at the helm, with his sons Alberto and Stefano Chiarlo, of Michele Chiarlo, one of Piedmont’s most prestigious wineries, has passed away at the age of 88. A story, that of Michele Chiarlo as a producer, which began in the mid-1950s, when the territory of the Langhe and Astigiano was certainly not the rich, prosperous and prestigious territory of today, and to look to the future of wine in the sign of quality, was for true pioneers. As it was, Michele Chiarlo, in seeing the potential of the link between wine and art, and wine tourism, so much so that he “invented”, in 2003, the Art Park La Court, on his estate, one of the first examples of land art among the vineyards, and to build, in 2011, the Palàs Cerequio resort, in La Morra. A pioneer who gave birth to an estate and a brand that today is among the most important and award-winning in the Piedmont of wine, Barolo (with cru such as Cerequio and Cannubi), Barbaresco (with cru such as Asili and Faset), as well as a symbol of the young Nizza appellation, top of the Barbera, which he helped to establish. “I had the pleasure of meeting, perhaps on one of the first times we met, Michele Chiarlo in the midst of the beauty of La Court Park”, recalls WineNews editor Alessandro Regoli, “along with internationally renowned names in modern-day art such as Emanule Luzzati and Ugo Nespolo: I like to remember above all his pioneering vision in imagining the vineyard as a place of art and culture, as well as a place where to produce great grapes for great wines, and his ability to think of wine territories as engines of tourism, when this was still really a rarity”.