(BBRBlog) - Living in the Langhe since 2009, and buying wines for London wine merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd now for over a decade, including spells promoting Australian, New Zealand, South African, Californian and French wine, I’ve been amazed and saddened by the overwhelming influence of the predominantly US press on the styles of wine produced here (and elsewhere along the Italian peninsula). Naïve I may well be, but as one Barolo producer put it succinctly: “you’re either ‘In’ or ‘Out’ [of the press ‘club’]”, with repercussions either way on US distribution. So despite Kerin O’Keefe’s candid, and I would say quite brave, exposé on the role of the US press in creating these ‘cartoon’ wines (as Mr Rosenthal puts it), the reality, or should I say tragedy, among the Langhe hills is that there is too much business at stake to allow the true, unadulterated beauty of Nebbiolo to be revealed (but I’ve yet to hear of a similar scandal to that of Spain’s ‘Campogate’ and the Wine Advocate…)