Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is a superbly delicate and carefully finessed wine that interprets the growing season with its alternating cold and hot intervals in an impeccable manner. The Bartolo Mascarello 2018 Barolo puts Nebbiolo and the vintage seamlessly together like lock and key. It opens to a beautiful drinking experience. The bouquet shows detail and finely tuned aromas of redcurrant, violet, rusty nail and blood orange. On the palate, this Barolo is so shiny and polished that it feels like silk. Without a doubt, this is one of the top wines of 2018.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lush and pure, the 2018 Barolo is a medium and transparent ruby hue, with aromas of fresh roses, wet stone, and ripe raspberry. This medium-bodied red is luxurious. with a silky and viscous texture and generous notes of ripe red cherry, warming cardamom spice, and soft earth. Elegant and long through the palate, with no harshness, it is drinking beautifully now or will continue to drink well over the next 15 years. Fermentation saw 45 days on the skins with a submerged cap.
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Wine Spectator
An alluring red, with plum and cherry fruit enhanced by woodsy notes and a hint of fresh porcini mushroom. On the elegant side, yet also has a firm underlying structure and sneaky length. Shows terrific harmony with a few hours of aeration (so decant now), yet this should only improve with another 5 to 7 years in the cellar. Best from 2025.
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.