From myth to history The origins of Barolo are obscured by the many legends surrounding it and its first producers, most of which have been passed down through time by word of mouth. Personally, the oldest bottle of Barolo I've ever seen, clearly labelled as such, dates from the year 1876. Thus, any wine from before this date was not sold under this name and went undocumented. This said, if these wines were produced with Nebbiolo grapes grown within the Barolo zone, they can surely be considered true predecessors of today's Barolo and as such deserve our consideration. The Langhe area was already populated during the Neolithic era but the first permanent settlements were founded by the Ligurian Stazielli, fierce tribes of Celto-Ligurian origin, during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. It was probably they who introduced to this area the viticulture which the Ancient Greeks before them had brought to the colonies situated along the Italian coast. The Romans were also great wine connoisseurs, producing and distributing wine throughout their empire in amphorae made specially for storing wine and oil on board their ships. During the first century B.C., Alba became Alba Pompeia, achieving status of Municipium, provincial town, under the rule of Consul Pompeius Strabone. It is impossible to date the appearance of Nebbiolo in the Langhe precisely although, even in Roman times, the area was well-known for its wines. Perhaps it was Nebbiolo that Pliny the Elder refers to when he describes 'Allobrogium' in his 'Naturalis Historia', a variety of late-maturing, cold-resistant grape native to northern Piedmont. A phrase of Julius Caesar is also often quoted: "et de Murra optima ad nostra Romae metropolium perduximus vina" ("… and from Murra we took excellent wines to our city of Rome") which appeared as a note in his Commentaries, in reference to an excellent wine that the Roman troops had taken as provisions on their return from Gaul to Rome. A funeral stele, now in the Alba Town Museum, refers to a certain Marcus Lucretius Crestus, 'Merkator Vinarius', or wine merchant, probably a common figure in the area at the time. With the fall of Rome, the Barbarian invaders left their mark in the Langhe too, in such place names as Barbaresco, which derives from 'Barbarica Silva', signifying 'a wood where barbarians hide'. The area had become too dangerous to inhabit and, during Medieval times, remained largely unpopulated leading to only residual or sporadic cultivation of vines. It is possible that precisely this isolation led to the mass conversion of the village of Monforte d'Alba to the Cathari heresy around the year 1028. A stele from the 1st century A.D. in remembrance of Marcu Lucretius Crestus, 'Merkator' Vinarius', wine merchant, found at Pollenzo near Alba in 1958