Winemaker Notes
This Barolo represents the history and tradition of blending different crus of Nebbiolo in order to create a house style. The same care and quality work are employed on this wine as for all of the cru Barolo. This wine is an opportunity for many clients to enjoy a great Barolo with an exceptional price quality ratio.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
I’m loving the combination of dried cranberries and incense with fresh rose petals and fruit tea. While the tannins are firm and serious, the medium-to full-bodied palate remains supple and elegant. Drink in 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
For a few years running now, this has been one of the Scavino family’s signature bottles. The goal here is to aim higher than your standard “base” or “classico” Barolo. The Paolo Scavino 2015 Barolo is made with a complicated blend of fruit from seven vineyard sites spread clear across the appellation from Castiglione Falletto, Barolo, Serralunga d’Alba and more townships. Each parcel is fermented separately, and some parcels are split into two or more individual fermentations. In order to maintain the highest quality standards, some 10% of the fruit is sold off as bulk, and once the overall selection is whittled down, the best fruit remains in-house. This is a compact and darkly saturated wine with bold blueberry and blackberry fruit. The wine shows a steady center of gravity in this warm, fruit-driven vintage.
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Wine & Spirits
This Barolo combines fruit from seven crus to make a balanced, attractively bright wine. Taut tannins cinch the ripe and generous flavors of dark cherry and plum, as the wine takes on notes of licorice, crunchy herbs and orange peel. Approachable now, it has plenty of verve to keep the flavors fresh for the next several years. Best Buy
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Wine Spectator
This is ripe, featuring cherry, plum, floral and licorice flavors. Fruity and open, with firm tannins for support. Best from 2021 through 2038.
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Wine Enthusiast
Red berry, violet, camphor and baking spice aromas waft out of the glass. On the linear, elegant palate, taut, fine-grained tannins offset dried cherry, orange rind, espresso and star anise alongside a mineral note evoking rusty iron. Drink 2020–2027.
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.
The center of the production of the world’s most exclusive and age-worthy red wines made from Nebbiolo, the Barolo wine region includes five core townships: La Morra, Monforte d’Alba, Serralunga d’Alba, Castiglione Falletto and the Barolo village itself, as well as a few outlying villages. The landscape of Barolo, characterized by prominent and castle-topped hills, is full of history and romance centered on the Nebbiolo grape. Its wines, with the signature “tar and roses” aromas, have a deceptively light garnet color but full presence on the palate and plenty of tannins and acidity. In a well-made Barolo wine, one can expect to find complexity and good evolution with notes of, for example, strawberry, cherry, plum, leather, truffle, anise, fresh and dried herbs, tobacco and violets.
There are two predominant soil types here, which distinguish Barolo from the lesser surrounding areas. Compact and fertile Tortonian sandy marls define the vineyards farthest west and at higher elevations. Typically the Barolo wines coming from this side, from La Morra and Barolo, can be approachable relatively early on in their evolution and represent the “feminine” side of Barolo, often closer in style to Barbaresco with elegant perfume and fresh fruit.
On the eastern side of the Barolo wine region, Helvetian soils of compressed sandstone and chalks are less fertile, producing wines with intense body, power and structured tannins. This more “masculine” style comes from Monforte d’Alba and Serralunga d’Alba. The township of Castiglione Falletto covers a spine with both soil types.
The best Barolo wines need 10-15 years before they are ready to drink, and can further age for several decades.