Fall is approaching and, with it, rich tastes of game and hearty foods and wines. It's a good time to savor the reds from Piedmont in the north of Italy. Famed for their complexity, these wines are cultivated near the town of Alba, around the villages of Barolo and Barbaresco.

With the soaring Alps as a backdrop, Alba lies on a narrow plain surrounded by steep hills. Conditions are cool in the summer, foggy in the autumn, often bitter in the winter.

Though Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc grapes also grow in Piedmont, wine lovers have long focused on the indigenous Nebbiolo. Only red wines made from this grape can claim the titles of the region's two greats: Barolo, from the village to the southwest of Alba, and Barbaresco, from the village to the northeast. While Barolos have a reputation for being rich and thick, Barbarescos are known for being elegant and aromatic, fresher and easier to drink in their youth; Barbaresco wines are often referred to as Barolo's younger siblings.

Nebbiolo wines are traditionally from Piedmont and were long little-known outside Italy. The grape had a reputation for yielding tough, tannic wines. This began to change about three decades ago, when a group of younger producers from the area who had studied winemaking techniques abroad returned home determined to produce cleaner, fresher and softer wines.

Their leader was Angelo Gaja. Born in Alba in 1940, Mr. Gaja studied both oenology and business in Italy and then studied winemaking in France. He also visited Robert Mondavi in California and saw how selective pruning and high-quality oak barrels transformed Napa Valley's wines. After Mr. Gaja took over the family business in 1970, he overhauled the operation, replanting many of the vineyards, installing temperature-controlled, stainless-steel tanks, and introducing the French concept of aging wines in small oak barrels instead of enormous casks. Today, he makes 30,000 cases a year of world-class wine -- with world-class prices, up to &euro;161 for a single bottle from his Sori Tildin vineyard.

As the Gaja vineyards prospered, other Piedmont winemakers, such as Renato Ratti and Aldo Conterno, warmed to his practices. They began making fresher and fruitier wines, with soft, smooth tannins, that could be drunk young. They did this by focusing on quality rather than quantity in growing grapes, and harvesting them later, when they were at the peak of ripeness. In the cellars, they vinified and bottled grapes from single vineyards, on the model of Bordeaux and Burgundy, introducing terms such as bric (hilltop) and sori (slope) on labels. Instead of letting wine stay in contact with the grape skin for months -- one reason for the toughness of traditional Nebbiolo wines -- they allowed little contact with skins.

Edward Steinberg, an American writer, gives a stirring account of this Piedmont revival in his book "The Making of a Great Wine: Gaja and Sori San Lorenzo." It was first published 1993, but is still available in paperback through Ecco Press and is still relevant. Ever since reading Mr. Steinberg's tale, I have yearned to taste a full selection of Nebbiolo wines. The approach of fall made for the perfect time. A colleague recently visited the region (see related story on this page) and purchased a selection of bottles, younger and older, less and more expensive. They were considered good, but moderately priced, choices, ranging from &euro;14 to &euro;35. For the most part, our tasting stuck with the modernists rather than the traditionalists.

A few other wine lovers joined in on the tasting. None were experts, but all were asked to give their impressions and grade the wines. Each taster received a simple photocopied sheet and was asked to give a rating of 0 to 10, along with comments. Though some professional tastings are done in the morning, when taste buds are freshest, I find these rules can miss the point of what wine is all about -- enjoyment. We met in the evening to make the event more convivial. I also like tasting wine with food, because that's how most people drink, so we indulged in other tastes of the region, accompanying the wine with pasta and grilled meat (beef, as game wasn't yet available) drizzled with truffle oil.

In Piedmont, a typical meal consists of at least six courses. (Not surprisingly, the "slow food" movement, the Old World's answer to the fast-food revolution, was founded in the region in 1986.) During autumn, Piedmont hunters make their way into the hills in search of wild boar and venison. Another type of hunter, accompanied by trained dogs, searches for the truffles that grow deep in the soil under trees. Piedmont is known for its celebrated white truffle, and local chefs sprinkle freshly grated truffles onto fresh pasta. This appetizer is followed by main courses with game in rich sauces. Chocolate cherry pralines often finish these feasts.

We started our tasting with generic Nebbiolo d'Alba wines. These run about &euro;15 a bottle and generally come from vineyards at the foot of the hills, which get less sunlight than the prime vineyards higher up. Piedmont organizes its wines along Burgundian lines, which start with generic Burgundies for wines made from grapes grown anywhere in France's entire Burgundy region and move up the price and taste range to single-vineyard specialties that can cost hundreds of euros. Nebbiolo wines smooth out over time and, despite the modernist revolution, often require aging of at least a decade to reveal their best flavors.

It didn't take us long to find out that Nebbiolo reds aren't for the faint-hearted. Far from the jammy, purple wines that are widely popular today, the wines we tasted ranged from pink to ruby red, and were austere and sometimes bitter. Yet they were in almost every case provocative and complex, with charcoal and cherry flavors overlaid with mint and licorice perfumes.

The Renato Ratti Nebbiolo D'Alba Ochetti from the 2003 vintage proved a nice introduction to Nebbiolo. Despite Ratti's reputation as a modernist, which would usually mean a deep-colored wine, this one was a faded red, the body medium-light. Some tasters liked the "spiciness," though others were put off by the wine's "tartness." One called it "an almost fizzy taste," and pronounced the wine "listless." I found it a bit tart.

In contrast, other tasters and I found the second Nebbiolo, made by Pio Cesare, from the 2001 vintage, much more pleasurable. The Pio Cesare estate was born more than a century ago and was modernized under the stewardship of the fourth-generation owner, Pio Boffa, the great-grandson of the founder. He notes that the grapes for this basic Nebbiolo d'Alba come from the right bank of the Tanaro river, typically an area producing the Nebbiolo grapes for Barolo and Barbaresco, and the wine is aged in new French oak for two years, quite long. Despite a pale tone, one taster wrote this had "a much, much richer taste" than the first wine. I found notes of cherries and raspberries with roasted nuts and tobacco, combining into a long finish.

We moved up the Nebbiolo ladder to two Barbarescos made by the same firm, the local cooperative Produttori Del Barbaresco. Though I'm not a fan of co-ops, which often lead to lowest-common-denominator wines -- it's hard to control the quality of the grapes produced by members -- the Barbaresco co-op has a good reputation and also produces several single-vineyard wines. One of the wines, a 1999 vintage, came from the co-op's Ovello vineyard. The other, a 2000, was a blend of grapes from the Barbaresco area. (The single-vineyard distinction is noted on the wine labels, and generally commands higher prices.)

Both were well-concentrated and brimming with cherry flavors. The consensus was in favor of the older vintage, from the single vineyard. Most tasters said it was much more flavorful than the younger, blended wine, which was criticized as having a "very strong alcoholic nose." Another taster cautioned that the older wine's "initial sweet pleasant taste too quickly fades into something almost bitter." But one taster praised it for its "long-lasting flavor," and I agreed that, though it wasn't immediately pleasing, when sipped over a period, it ended up exhibiting pleasant fruit aromas overlaid with a welcoming nuttiness. Overall, though, the entire tasting panel thought the 1999 was fruitier and more pleasant.

Next up were the Barolos, which I expected would be blockbusters. The first was Barale Fratelli's 2000 Barolo, and it proved up to the billing. This estate, founded in 1870, has its cellar on the main square in Barolo. It has prime hillside vineyards in the region, called the Langhe. "A diverse palate," a taster said. "Roses, balanced," commented another. "Spicy, fruity," concluded a third. I gave the wine the highest rating of the tasting, a 9. It was a chewy, dense wine, with not just the typical cherry flavor, but also blackberry and cassis.

The other Barolo, a single-vineyard Prunotto from the 1996 vintage, is made in a winery run by the giant Antinori firm, which has a reputation for making modern, accessible wines. Unfortunately, the bottle in our tasting was corked; it had a foul, musty taste reminiscent of a barnyard. Corkiness, the result of either a tainted cork or a cork that lets in unwanted air, comes in various degrees, and this wine had a strong case.

Later, we called the estate and got a replacement. I tasted it and was underwhelmed. It had nice flavors of cherries and nuts, but was tough and leathery. "A difficult wine," judged my wife, Anu. My colleague with long experience of Nebbiolo concurred that it came well below his memories of top-flight Barolos.

Despite the enjoyable and drinkable range of wines we tried at the tasting, we decided it was incomplete without sampling the most renowned Nebbiolo of all -- a Gaja. I obtained a Gaja Barbaresco 2001 for &euro;102 and went into the tasting ready to judge this high-priced wine by the toughest standards. Often, I find celebrated wines build up such expectations that they fall short.

But in this case, the color was perfect -- a deep, full, velvet red. The nose hinted of cherries and blackberries. The taste had beautiful notes of cinnamon and licorice, overlaid with a welcome smokiness. Most extraordinary was the perfect balance. This wine wasn't a blockbuster in the conventional sense of a power-packed, jammy wine that explodes with fruit. Instead, it exhibited an elegant symphony of flavors. While all the other Nebbiolos had some jarring notes, the Gaja was smooth and full of finesse.

My conclusion: Nebbiolos aren't wines for wimps. They don't offer simple tastes. They can be erratic and fickle. And yet, as the Gaja shows, when well done, they can soar into the stratosphere. True wine lovers should try Nebbiolo wines, accept their imperfections and rejoice in their uniqueness.