Winemaker Notes
Intense garnet red color. Rich and composite bouquet of sweet spices, dried flowers, leather and undergrowth harmonious, well structured with elegant tannins and great balance and complexity elegant and powerful wine at the same time
Try it with roasted, skewered and grilled red meats and ripe cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Hints of tomato leaf aromas grace this otherwise fruity red. Rich, offering cherry and strawberry flavors accented by mint and iron. Reveals refined tannins, which provide structure and leave a chalky finish. Best from 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This pretty bottle boasts a new label design with simple graphics and a slightly retro personality. Due to the difficult growing season, no single-vineyard wines were made in 2018. Instead, fruit was bended here. The Ascheri 2018 Barolo is a classic interpretation of Nebbiolo (representing an assembly of fruit from La Morra, Verduno and Serralunga d'Alba) with an immediately compelling bouquet that reveals a good amount of complexity and some unexpected notes of dried flower and orange peel at the back of wild cherry and redcurrant. This vintage opens quickly (uncork it a few hours before without decanting) and has the upfront consistency and balance to enjoy in the medium term. The finish is also slightly shorter and leaner in this edition.
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Wine Enthusiast
The shy nose offers whiffs of violet, damp underbrush, leather and camphor. The palate has an earthy, almost rustic charm, offering truffle, black olive, botanical herb and Morello cherry before finishing on notes recalling salted game. Tight, dusty tannins leave a drying finish.
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.