The famous French viticultural scientist Louis Oudart is considered the birth father of the world-famous Italian DOCG red wines Barbaresco and Barolo. Around 1850, Giulietta Falletti, the Marquesa of Barolo (*1785), called him to the municipality of Barolo in the Italian region of Piedmont to advise her on her vineyard. Oudart was very taken with the Nebbiolo variety cultivated here and recognised its great potential. He experimented with dry vinification, which was not practised at the time. The locals hardly succeeded, the wine usually turned out relatively sweet and unstable and had only a short life. Due to the late ripening of the Nebbiolo, fermentation took place in the cold months of November and December and the yeasts of the time were not suitable for a complete to ferment fully under these conditions. Another important reason was the lack of hygiene in the winemaking process.
For the cellar experiments, King Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878) even provided his hunting lodge Fontanafredda in the mountains of Serralunga d'Alba (province of Cuneo) and his son Emanuele Alberto (1851-1894) the vineyards around the hunting lodge. The name "wine of kings - king of wines" for Barolo is probably due to this support from the ruling dynasty of the time. In the cellar, Oudart relied on techniques from the cool Champagne region, where this problem was well known. He moved the fermentation process to newly built underground wine cellars and ensured constant optimal temperatures and maximum cleanliness. Louis Oudart succeeded in producing a completely dry, long-lived Barolo and the triumphal procession began. The new type of wine quickly found favour in Turin and was one of the favourite drinks of the House of Savoy (ruler of Piedmont).
Louis Odart then similarly supported the count and later minister-president of Sardinia Camillo Cavour (1810-1861), who had studied modern agriculture in London. He owned a vineyard in the Monferrato mountains and wanted to introduce new winemaking techniques to the region, among other things. On his estate Castello di Neive in the municipality of Barbaresco, Louis Odart then succeeded in repeating the success achieved with Barolo. The dry wine made from the Nebbiolo grape was awarded a prize in a competition in London. However, it was not until the end of the 19th century that the red wine became known as Barbaresco.
Some circumstantial evidence suggests that, in all likelihood, there never was a Louis Oudart (although all well-known authors, such as Jancis Robinson, Hugh Johnson and others, call the name exactly that). On the net, the names Louis Oudart, Louise Oudart (sic) and Louis Odart are mentioned. In French literature, one does not find any Oudart who had made remarkable achievements in viticulture in the 19th century. So it is possible that at some point someone may have misspelled the name - and everyone subsequently copied from each other. So who is actually behind this person? Well - there is a lot to be said for Alexandre-Pierre Odart (1778-1866). He was a well-known oenologist, had good contacts to the Italian royal family, his life data, his international experience and the name Comte Odart fit, because in Italian literature the famous Conte Odart is often mentioned in connection with Barolo.
