Barolo’s rising prices have pushed collectors to look beyond Nebbiolo. Increasingly they are turning to Barbera, Piedmont’s most planted red. The grape delivers dark cherry fruit, bright acidity and gentle tannin, and has long been priced as an everyday wine. The rise of Barbera d’Asti and the Nizza appellation has begun to change that standing.

For anyone buying to keep, one question remains: does Barbera age? At Antica Casa Vinicola Scarpa the answer has been sitting in the cellar for three decades, in the form of its single-vineyard flagship, La Bogliona.

Is fine wine still a good investment?

Fine wine can still reward careful buyers, but the gains have become highly selective. The broad market has stalled: the Liv-ex 100 closed the first half of 2026 up just 0.1 per cent. Italy, however, led every regional index, with the Italy 100 rising 1.9 per cent, according to WineNews. The wines

that continue to gain value tend to share a clear profile: slow, deliberate release and a Piedmont origin. One Barolo, Bruno Giacosa’s Falletto Vigna Le Rocche Riserva 2016, rose 19.2 per cent. Scarpa has produced wines to that slower profile since 1900.

“We have never made wine for a market cycle. La Bogliona is built to improve for thirty years, whatever the index does that year,” says Evgeny Strzhalkovsky, the Monaco-based entrepreneur who has owned Scarpa since 2017.

Why do wine estates hold back stock?

A wine released at maturity is usually worth more than the same wine sold young. The estate that ages it also retains control of condition, provenance and price. Most serious houses therefore hold back a portion of each vintage. At Scarpa this is the core model: releases are limited and allocated, the house bears the cost of long ageing, and demand has consistently exceeded supply.

“We sell a wine when the house decides it is ready, never when the market asks,” Strzhalkovsky says. “The scarcity is a consequence, not a tactic.”

How has Scarpa grown?

Revenue has risen from €800,000 in 2016 to a projected €4 million in 2026, led by Norway, Italy and the United States. The growth has come without altering the method: indigenous yeasts, large old oak botti, late releases and strict allocation. What has changed is the number of buyers who now seek wines made this way.

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What makes a wine worth collecting?

Three qualities matter most: scarcity that is structural rather than manufactured, a proven track record of improvement with age, and clean provenance, ideally unbroken from a single cellar. Estates that release late and sell on allocation can deliver all three.

La Bogliona meets the test. Supply is fixed by the size of one vineyard; demand is not. As a result the allocation routinely sells out ahead of the rest of the range. The evidence of ageing sits in the Caveau, the library at Scarpa’s cellars in Nizza Monferrato, where vintages stretch back thirty years in bottles that have never left the property. It is a Barbera raised with the patience usually reserved for Nebbiolo, the kind of bottle collectors look for before the wider market fully notices it. Scarpa Experiences pours mature vintages during cellar tours and tastings.

“The vineyard is one plot. We could sell the allocation three times over, and the fastest way to ruin La Bogliona would be to try,” Strzhalkovsky says.

Who owns Scarpa?

Since 2017 the house has been owned by Evgeny Strzhalkovsky, a Monaco-based entrepreneur and winemaker. Through his company, Maison Eugène René, he develops wine and spirit brands; his other interests include Scarpa Villas and Scarpa Experiences in Piedmont. The market will continue to move. Scarpa’s approach remains simpler: make a wine that improves for decades, and hold enough back to prove it.