Who  else  remembers  this “Nebbiolo”?

On the label is written "Nebiolo", one "b" because the winemaker "Sergio Ternavasio" thought writing "b" twice in a row was too long.

Few among our contemporary audience will recognize this bottle. Text and explanation is needed!

When I left the village of "Lede" in East Flanders in 2012 to live part-time in Cherasco (1.5 months every 3 months), this was a way to get to know the countryside of San Michele Cherasco - located on the border between Cherasco and La Morra - in all possible conditions. This in so-so summer "overheated" scenarios as winter snows blocking your entire day. I had been told that 1 meter of snow could fall, it never actually did. I had been operating in Piedmont since 2011 with my own online travel agency that only came about after 6 years of intensive preparation and training. So it was also a way to be closer to the customer in the busy spring, summer and autumn period.

So from 2013 Made In Piedmont Wines was added and I was not only the point of contact online but went on tour as a private wine guide with mostly 80% American audience, 15% Asian audience and 5% Dutch-Belgians, Scandinavians and Russians.

With our private driver, I traveled from wine estate to wine estate, touching lunch and artisan producers of slow food in the meantime. One of these was Sergio Ternavasio as virtually unknown in the international wine scene. All the rest of my daily visits were the big names everyone knows (Gaja, Ettore Germano, Cogno etc....)

At the end of the ride each day was "anonymously" asked which wine producer had charmed the audience the most as a person but also with his wines, for whom they had the most sympathy for his work in the cantina and in the vineyard, who for them had the highest form of authenticity. Time and again the name of "Sergio Ternavasio" came up.

Given that in recent years I have only distributed the big names with my Italian VAT number such as Gaja, Bruno Giacosa, etc...more and more the idea of working with these unknown shrimps bubbled up. In my offer in terms of visits with Americans, etc... a big chastisement was made and only the small wineries with a very limited production were visited. The Americans in particular liked these small-scale winegrowers where the winegrower himself still comes out of his Panda, opens the cantina, the winegrower himself still serves, tells stories and takes the audience along with him. My job was mostly to interpret what I am trained to do by the way (interpreter Italian, English, French) .

By the time of the turnaround we were at year 2015. Stocks were laid out, one permanent person was provided as I myself was thus always "on tour". Since in 2013 I had moved from Barolo to Barbaresco, had a large villa with 150m2 of refrigerated cellar space, the time had come to also sell to my public of eno-gastronomic tours wines exported through our still current Italian VAT number to mainly Americans but also Scandinavians and other nationalities.

Concretely this means that e.g. Sergio Ternavasio who was barely known about 10 km around his own cantina was from then on in the wine cellars in San Francisco, New York, Houston, California etc... Many pay masses of money to get off the ground in the US and to perpetuate their presence but with our mapped out route this went like peanuts. Customers from then, read 2015, still order their annual stock. Americans are "dog loyal" when it comes to wines, in my experience.

Only with those Belgians did it not exactly run smoothly to bring Sergio Ternavasio to the man or woman. The then handwritten label met with resistance. The label - apparently primordial for the Belgians as opposed to the contents of the bottle at the time - did not have a charming character for them, but showed a very low level of taste.

Problem solving has always been my middle name. So a "private label" was chosen. A label was developed by a graphic office combining elegant black, white and very little red with the tower of Barbaresco in the background (landmark). Also "the child" needed a name and it became "Poesia della Terra".

A photo shoot was booked, the late Frank Van der Auwera was given a bottle for tasting with very nice commentary figures and the train was off. Sales of Sergio Ternavasio's Nebbiolo ran like a "tgv" by simply applying different strategy. Following the Nebbiolo, the Barbaresco, Barbera and Langhe Arneis were also private labeled.

Meanwhile, it is still the case anno 2025 that without wasting one euro on marketing, traveling to market his new wines, Sergio Ternavasio sells as much as the average Barbaresco producer. But three years after the private label, we did switch to Sergio Ternavasio's authentic label because by then the name was more than familiar. Sergio's enological value was "settled" with the Belgians.

Piquant detail: Sergio still sticks his own labels and does not have his own labeling machine....

Current Label of Sergio Ternavasio "Nebbiolo" (read Nebiolo)

https://www.madeinpiedmont-wines.be/vini-rossi/nebbiolo-dalba/sergio-ternavasio----langhe-nebbiolo---2020