How hens saved Barolo

Barolo is one of the world’s most prestigious wine regions. It’s home to the King and Queen of Wines (Barolo and Barbaresco respectively). At auctions, some vintage Barolo wines regularly go for tens of thousands of dollars. The land surrounding the villages of Barolo and La Morra are valued at roughly €1.5 million per hector (one hector is slightly larger than a football field). 
 
It hasn’t always been this way. By the mid-1950s, the region was on the verge of collapse. Effects of the phylloxera epidemic still lingered. Two World Wars and economic depression threatened to bring wine growing to a halt, as many winemakers and vineyard workers fled rural areas to find manufacturing jobs and better lives in cities. 
 
Enter Arnaldo Rivera and the wine cooperative he created in 1958, Terre Del Barolo. At a time when farmers were abandoning their land, the cooperative allowed them to band together to create a market for their wines, share resources, equipment, and profits. 
 
Previous efforts to form cooperatives failed, so despite the need, convincing growers and producers to join proved difficult. But Arnaldo Rivera was a resourceful man. A soldier in the Italian army during WW II, Rivera deserted to fight the 
 
fascist government. Upon liberation, he became a primary school teacher and later mayor of Castigilone Falletto. 
 
To counter opposition to the cooperative, Rivera set up a hen cooperative among his students to sell eggs to fund an end of year school trip. The hen cooperative was a success and many of those students’ parents signed on to create Terre Del Barolo, which has been credited with saving Barolo. 
 
One of the original 22 signatories to the Terre Del Barolo charter was Angelo Moscone, a passionate Barolo producer from Monforte d’Alba. Today, Terre Del Barolo has over 300 members, which includes Sara Moscone, Angelo’s granddaughter and current owner of Cantina Moscone.