It’s hardly surprising that that refreshing, revelatory line came from an Italian winemaker. The Italians, after all, consider wine to be an inexorable part of everyday life, a liquid of sustenance, something to be savored but not deconstructed.

Interestingly, the wines made by this gentleman — Cesare Barbero, for Pertinace in the Piedmont region — are interesting enough to be discussed and even dissected. But rather than delineating the sundry aromas and flavors we were getting from five of his wines – a practice that, don’t get me wrong, can be a lot of fun — we talked about other aspects of wine over lunch at Campiello.

Like how Barbero and other winemakers knew that the 2002 vintage, plagued by way too much rain just before harvest time, was not good enough to put on a bottle with their names on it. So Pertinace, along with other wineries in Piedmont as well as the southern Rhone region in neighboring France, sold their fermented juice to bulk bottlers (in the Italians’ case, for only the second time in a half-century, along with 1984).

“The wine just tasted old” early in the winemaking process, said Barbero, “and we knew it wouldn’t age well.”

The next year was a different story entirely, if the 2003 Barbarescos we tasted are any indication. Both Pertinace’s regular bottling and the single-vineyard Marcarini were lush, layered, spicy and slighty leathery efforts. They certainly didn’t “taste old,” or even necessarily fully mature, so I asked Carbone if they would improve with age.

“These will be better in a year,” he said, “and should continue to improve. But there are too many factors that decide the life of a wine to know for sure.”

The solution with a Barbaresco such as this is to buy several — Sorella, Sutler’s and Buon Giorno carry Pertinace wines — and try one every six months or so.

Or just do like the Italians do: enjoy Pertinace wines now (the less complex Dolcetto d’Alba, Barbera d’Alba and white Roero Arneis are tasty values at less than half the price, around $15) and don’t expend any energy pondering wine’s vagaries.

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