Winemaker Notes
Intense garnet red color with orange reflections. Ethereal, persistent, intense "goudron" perfume. Dry, harmonious, velvety, full-bodied, austere and generous taste.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of ripe strawberries with bark, cedar and hazelnuts. Some meaty undertones, too. Full-bodied with a tight palate, but opulent fruit oozes through at the end. Shows lots of promise for the straight-up Barolo. Try after 2023.
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Wine Enthusiast
Silky and smooth, this poised red opens with aromas of woodland berry, forest floor and camphor. It’s savory and polished, offering flavors of juicy black cherry and licorice with a hint of hazelnut before finishing on a note of blood orange. Lithe tannins and fresh acidity keep it balanced. It’s already accessible, but will also age well for several years. Drink through 2026.
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Wine Spectator
A mix of cherry, plum, rose, licorice, tar and tobacco highlights this textbook Barolo. It's vibrant and has grip, with balance and muscle to keep it focused, and the potential for a long future. Excellent length. Best from 2024 through 2043.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Barolo has aromas of raspberry leather, smoke, and tar. The palate is savory, tangy, and mineral rich, with sour cherry, walnut, and iron. The 2016 is clean with a rustic edge and would be great at the table. Drink 2023-2036.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Borgogno 2016 Barolo wears a light and delicate fabric with a lacework of detailed and subtle aromas. Nothing is too big or too bold in this wine that adopts a genuine and traditional approach to Nebbiolo. Indeed, it could be criticized for coming in so far under the intensity threshold, especially for a classic vintage such as this. Soft cherry and cassis segue to spice, smoke, rusty nail and licorice. The wine should flesh out with more cellaring.
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Wine & Spirits
Andrea Farinetti combines fruit from five crus (Cannubi, Cannubi San Lorenzo, Fossati, Liste and San Pietro delle Viole) in this classic Barolo. It shows a core of vibrant red-cherry fruit enlivened by a note of orange zest, gaining a hint of salin-ity toward the cool 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.