Winemaker Notes
From the outstanding 2020 growing season comes a wine of delicacy and power - the 2020 Le Vigne Barolo has a lifted nose of black fruits, roses and violets, with accents of cola nut and graphite. On the palate, the flavors of black and red fruits predominate, with lovely ripe tannins and a generous, high-toned finish. Tasting this wine begs the question: is it already “ready?” The balance and drinkability of the wine are surprising for this bottling at such an early point in its development, but careful tasting reveals the profound depth of the tannins and structure. The tannin is so ripe and smooth that it seems to disappear into the wine. But it is there and should support the wine through a few decades of cellaring.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The blackberry, spice and tar aromas are enticing and follow through to a full yet tight body that shows density and depth. The tannins are extremely well integrated and feel melted into the wine. Slightly bitter orange and mineral character at the end. Complex and curated. Drink after 2027.
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Wine Enthusiast
The wine is a bold expression of dark macerated cherries, earthy undertones with the nuanced complexity of oolong tea and a medley of spices and hen of the wood mushrooms. The palate is marked by a dark, smoky character, dusted with spices, creating a big and commanding presence in the glass that showcases the depth and power of the wines but never goes too far, maintaining an elegant line throughout the glass.
Cellar Selection -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Luciano Sandrone 2020 Barolo Le Vigne is open-knit in texture with sun-drenched aromas. You get ripe fruit with black cherry, blackcurrant, forest floor and wild mushroom. With time in the glass, the wine reveals floral definition, grilled tarragon herb and a heavier note of wheat biscuit. Starting with the 2019 vintage, Le Vigne also includes Le Coste di Monforte fruit along with fruit from Baudana in Serralunga d'Alba, Villero in Castiglione Falletto, Vignane in Barolo and Merli in Novello.
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Wine Spectator
Black cherry, raspberry and plum fruit is wrapped in a veil of toasty oak in this solidly built red. Ripe and dense, yet with a sense of elegance, this persists on the iron- and eucalyptus-tinged finish, with fine balance and freshness. A bit closed now in terms of the vintage. Best from 2029 through 2050.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Barolo Le Vigne shows off the flashier side of the estate, revealing generous aromas of oak spice, ripe red cherries, cocoa, and crushed flowers. Medium-bodied, it’s ripe and structured on the palate, with grippy tannins and a long finish. It deserves another couple of years in bottle to come into its own.
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Vinous
The 2020 Barolo Le Vigne is graced with brilliant aromatic intensity and plenty of depth. Crushed rose petal, mint, blood orange, spice, lavender and pomegranate all meld together. Le Vigne has a bit more aromatic vibrancy and verve than the Aleste, but shares a general feeling of openness with its sibling.
Luciano Sandrone is one of the most iconic producers in Barolo, and his is both a well known and extraordinary story. He started to learn viticulture at the age of 14 or 15, and after years of work as a cellarman he depleted his life savings and purchased his first vineyard on the Cannubi hill in 1977, though he could only manage his land on the weekends while he continued to work. He made his first vintage in 1978, in the garage of his parents, and then spent years refining his ideas about how to make a wine of distinction and utmost quality that respected the traditions of Barolo while incorporating new ideas and understanding about viticulture and vinification. He made every vintage until 1999 at home, until the winery he constructed in 1998 was ready for use.
Sandrone's wines are sometimes described as straddling the modern and traditional styles in the region: elegant, attractive and easy to appreciate right from their first years in bottle, but with no less power and structure than traditional Barolos. Along with the extremely low yields in the vineyard and an obsessive attention to training, pruning and harvesting, Sandrone has a very rational approach in the cellar. This approach, however, is also unique and outside of simple classification: Sandrone subjects his wines to medium-length maceration period, shorter than traditional, but makes limited use of new oak in the maturation process, which takes place in 500 liter tonneaux, all signs of a more traditional approach in the cellar. The entire range of wines, all limited in production, are jewels of impeccably balanced concentration and precision, and the ability to age for long periods of time.
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.