Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Fresh and floral with orange peel, crab apples, and cranberries. Flowers. Full-bodied with a very fine line of tannins through the center palate. Lovely texture. Persistent finish. Power with elegance. Gorgeous now but will age beautifully. An excellent example of this fresh and fine vintage. Better after 2026.
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Wine Spectator
This red combines a vibrant structure with pure fruit, elegance and intensity. Cherry, strawberry, licorice, wild herb, mineral and tobacco flavors align with the supple texture, while fine-grained tannins emerge midpalate and build to the long, spirited finish. Best from 2026 through 2046.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Barbaresco Riserva Camp Gros Martinenga (with 7,700 bottles hitting the market now) is a wine that boasts extra energy and verve. There is a vibrant, vertical quality to the bouquet that hits home thanks to its aromas of cassis, dried raspberry and earthy iris root. The wine grows in complexity as it evolves in the glass to show toasted aniseed and mild spice along the way. That's the magic of the limestone marl soils of Barbaresco.
Rating: 95+ -
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Barbaresco Riserva Camp Gros Martinenga displays a slightly deeper ruby hue and opens to notes of ripe cherries and a more pronounced spice profile of licorice, rosemary, and peppercorn. It has good tension and concentration, with a very nice harmonious structure, good energy, notes of tea leaf, ripe tannins, and a lovely savory finish with a hint of apricot. This is a very nice offering to drink over the next 8- 10 years.
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Vinous
The 2018 Barbaresco Riserva Martinenga Camp Gros is a very pretty wine, and also a Camp Gros that will drink well upon release. It shows good freshness, but also the smaller scaled style of the year. Dark red fruit, rose petal, mint, blood orange, cedar and spice. This is a very pretty wine, but it does not have the body or dark balsamic profile that are the signatures of Camp Gros in its strongest years.
Responsible for some of the most elegant and age-worthy wines in the world, Nebbiolo, named for the ubiquitous autumnal fog (called nebbia in Italian), is the star variety of northern Italy’s Piedmont region. Grown throughout the area, as well as in the neighboring Valle d’Aosta and Valtellina, it reaches its highest potential in the Piedmontese villages of Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero. Outside of Italy, growers are still very much in the experimentation stage but some success has been achieved in parts of California. Somm Secret—If you’re new to Nebbiolo, start with a charming, wallet-friendly, early-drinking Langhe Nebbiolo or Nebbiolo d'Alba.
A wine that most perfectly conveys the spirit and essence of its place, Barbaresco is true reflection of terroir. Its star grape, like that in the neighboring Barolo region, is Nebbiolo. Four townships within the Barbaresco zone can produce Barbaresco: the actual village of Barbaresco, as well as Neive, Treiso and San Rocco Seno d'Elvio.
Broadly speaking there are more similarities in the soils of Barbaresco and Barolo than there are differences. Barbaresco’s soils are approximately of the same two major soil types as Barolo: blue-grey marl of the Tortonion epoch, producing more fragile and aromatic characteristics, and Helvetian white yellow marl, which produces wines with more structure and tannins.
Nebbiolo ripens earlier in Barbaresco than in Barolo, primarily due to the vineyards’ proximity to the Tanaro River and lower elevations. While the wines here are still powerful, Barbaresco expresses a more feminine side of Nebbiolo, often with softer tannins, delicate fruit and an elegant perfume. Typical in a well-made Barbaresco are expressions of rose petal, cherry, strawberry, violets, smoke and spice. These wines need a few years before they reach their peak, the best of which need over a decade or longer. Bottle aging adds more savory characteristics, such as earth, iron and dried fruit.