Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
In the blend of Maria Teresa Mascarello's Barolo 2020, the replanted San Lorenzo vineyard makes a comeback, with a small portion of young-vine fruit. It was harvested on 2 October, while the rest (from Rocche dell'Annunziata and Cannubi) was picked from 4-8 October, after the rain. The result is a wine with a backdrop of very fresh redcurranty fruits, violets, deep spices including liquorice root, as well as hints of linden, almost camphor, and wild strawberry. A defined expression demonstrating a lot of maturity and savouriness.
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James Suckling
This vintage is extremely floral, offering restrained violets, linden tree, camphor and balsamic tones and fresh redcurrants. On the full-bodied palate there is great licorice-stick flavor with refreshing, lifted acidity and firm, velvety tannins that are savory and ripe. Bright expression of Barolo, full of detail, more elegant than powerful.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Barolo is a transparent red hue and offers an approachable Grenache-like ease on the nose that is quite pretty and fruity with aromas of candied strawberries, hints of purple flowers, herbes de Provence, and sweet earth. The palate is savory and more classic in its structure, with refined yet well-defined tannins, refreshing, bright acidity, and driving notes of orange peel, apricot pit, and salty earth through an elegant and long finish. As is always the case, it is sourced from the four crus of Cannubi, Rocche dell’Annunziata, San Lorenzo, and Rue. While it feels approachable now, with a charming, juicy feel upfront, it should have a wide window for enjoyment and solid longevity over the coming two decades.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This wine is on the market now. The Bartolo Mascarello 2020 Barolo represents a blend of fruit from five sites for the first time, Maria Teresa Mascarello tells me excitedly. The classic blend of the recent past saw fruit from Rue and Cannubi in Barolo and Rocche dell’Annunziata in La Morra. San Lorenzo, if only with fruit from a mere 3,000 square meters of seven-year-old vines, returns to the blend with this vintage. The wine also has fruit from Monrobio di Bussia from 4,000 square meters of leased vineyards.
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Wine Spectator
This graceful, fragrant Barolo exhibits strawberry, cherry, rose hip, mineral and earth flavors. There's grip from the lightly chewy tannins, plus vivid acidity. Overall, this red is pure, expressive and fluid, showing fine length and intensity.
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Vinous
The 2020 Barolo is classy, elegant and polished, just as it was last year. Crushed flowers, sage, citrus mint, spice, cedar and pipe tobacco give this ethereal, nuanced Barolo notable aromatic presence. All the elements are very nicely balanced. This is an especially ethereal Barolo from Maria Teresa Mascarello. Nervy tannins lend verve throughout.
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.