Formerly a salesman, Domenico Clerico became the full time winemaker at his family's small domain in 1979.  Since then he has had a remarkable career: Clerico is one of the most respected names in Piedmont, and Domenico is renowned as one of the wine world's greatest characters.  One of 'Parker's darlings' during Parker's heyday, he is immensely successful, and now has one of Piedmont's most spectacular new wineries to prove it. Almost painfully intense, enigmatic, spiritual, prone to baffling Zen-like pronoucements  - and even more baffling weighty silences - he is both deeply passionate and fiercely intelligent, committed to excellence and zealously determined to express the full potential of Piemontese grapes and terroirs.  At first he can be intimidating (in the way that fiercely ambitious people can be), but he also has an utterly disarming childlike way of taking great delight in simple things - his own jokes for instance. And you soon figure out what the ambition is all about: all he really wants to do is make the best wine he possibly can and share it with people who deserve it.

 If Domenico Clerico's wines needed to be described in one word, that word would be 'generous'.  'Trevigne' Barbera d'Alba 2010 is a perfect example of his style, seemingly designed to unleash a torrent of Parkerisms: lavishly aromatic, sumptuously textured, bounteously full of fruit, opulent, and luxuriously long lasting.  Given the immense popularity of Clerico's wines, our allocations are always small; sadly 25 six-packs of this outstanding Barbera cannot last long.