There is a wine the growers of the Langhe keep for themselves. Not the Barolo, which goes to auction houses and collectors and people who like to talk about tannin at dinner. Barbera. It is the bottle open on the kitchen table while the great Nebbiolo sleeps in the cellar, the red poured without ceremony beside a plate of tajarin and a Tuesday that needed rescuing. If autumn has an everyday hero, this juicy, dark, high-spirited grape is it.

The grape that does the work

Barbera has spent most of its life being taken for granted, which is usually a sign that something is quietly indispensable. For centuries it was Piedmont's workhorse, planted on the sites the Nebbiolo did not want, poured young, drunk fast, rarely written about. It is still the most planted red grape in the region, and it earns that acreage. Where Nebbiolo demands patience and a lecture, Barbera asks only that you pour it.

The character comes down to a happy quirk of chemistry. Barbera holds on to its bright, mouth-watering acidity even when it ripens fully, and it carries very little tannin. That combination is why it feels so alive in the glass, all dark cherry and blackberry snap, and why it never scratches or grips the way a young Barolo does. It is a red with the appetite of a white, the sort of wine that has you reaching for a second glass before you have finished thinking about the first.

Alba or Asti: the two homes of Barbera

Two names dominate the label. Barbera d'Alba comes from the Langhe hills around Alba, the same slopes that grow Nebbiolo, and it tends to be the richer, rounder of the pair, often with a whisper of oak and a little more flesh on the bone. Barbera d'Asti, from the gentler country to the north, is usually purer and more lifted, the fruit turned up and the structure left well alone. Neither is better. One is Sunday's cardigan, the other a crisp autumn morning. Both belong to the wider story of Piedmont, the region that quietly makes some of Italy's greatest reds.

Our own Barbera comes from Punset, a family estate in Neive that has farmed organically since long before it was fashionable. Their Barbera d'Alba is the everyday hero in its truest form: dark-fruited, savoury, alive with acidity, and priced so that opening one on a weeknight never feels like an event.

What it tastes like

Picture a bowl of ripe black cherries with a squeeze of blood orange over the top, a little crushed violet, a curl of black pepper. There is depth here, a purple-black colour that stains the glass, but no weight to slow you down. Good Barbera has the swagger of a wine that knows it will be finished. The oaked d'Alba versions add a note of cocoa and warm spice, as though the cherries had been folded into something baked. The unoaked bottlings stay bright and a little wild, closer to the fruit straight off the tree.

From workhorse to thoroughbred

For a long time nobody thought to take Barbera seriously, least of all the people who made it. Then, in the early 1980s, a larger-than-life grower in Asti named Giacomo Bologna put his Barbera into new French oak and released it as Bricco dell'Uccellone. It landed like a small revolution. Here, suddenly, was Barbera with structure and ambition, a wine that could sit at the top table rather than under it. Growers across Piedmont followed, and the grape has kept a foot in both camps ever since: the joyful everyday red on one side, the serious barrel-aged bottling on the other. You can drink it either way and be right.

The wine autumn was waiting for

This is where Barbera earns its keep. That racy acidity is a solvent for richness, which makes it one of the great food reds and a natural for the cooking that arrives with the cold. Ragu clinging to fresh pasta, a pizza blistered at the edges, a board of salumi and hard cheese, a Sunday roast with all the trimmings: Barbera cuts through the lot and comes back for more. Serve it a degree or two below room temperature, somewhere near cellar-cool, and it sharpens up beautifully. As the clocks prepare to turn and Piedmont brings in its harvest, this is the red to have standing by.

If you want to watch Barbera do its full trick, pour it beside the wine it usually defers to: the everyday bottle and the special one, made by the same hands.

The everyday hero, and the wine it makes room for

Piedmont runs on a quiet hierarchy. Dolcetto and Barbera are the weekday wines, poured freely while the serious bottles wait. Nebbiolo, in the shape of Barolo and Barbaresco, is kept for the occasions that deserve it. Punset's Barbaresco is that occasion wine: Nebbiolo from the celebrated 2016 vintage, all tar, dried rose and fine structure, the kind of bottle you decant on a dark evening and talk about afterwards. The lovely thing is that the same family makes both, so you can taste the whole arc of the Langhe, from the wine you drink to the wine you keep, without leaving one address.

Barbera will never carry the mystique of its famous neighbour, and it has made peace with that. Its genius is availability, the way it turns an ordinary night into something worth sitting down for. Keep a bottle within reach. Autumn is long, the table is set, and the Barolo can wait a little longer in the dark.