Winemaker Notes
A wonderful pairing with meat, pasta and aged cheese.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This has a very impressive nose with ripe red cherries and plums, as well as abundant notes of sweet spice. The palate delivers a very assertive, plush and fleshy impression with a core of incredibly vibrant fruit that holds super fresh. The tannins are vibrant and the length is very impressive. Try from 2023.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
You'll find broader strokes and more heft in the 2015 Barolo Ginestra Vigna Sorì Ginestra than in the other crus from Conterno Fantino, along with extra levels of power and dimension. This vintage boasts lots of fiber and intensity, with dark fruit contrasting against spice, tar and tobacco. The wine shows more structure at the back, too, one of the important differences that makes this wine well suited to longer cellar aging. This is simply a complete Barolo with gorgeous texture, so fine and detailed, and it will hold up for years to come.
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Wine Spectator
Ample sweet plum, blackberry, black cherry, licorice, tar and underbrush aromas and flavors are accented by vanilla and toasty oak in this lively Barolo. Pure, verging on racy, with a light sinewy feel to the tannins. Complex, fresh and long. Best from 2024 through 2043.
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Wine & Spirits
From vines planted between 1971 and 1988, this is a robust, powerful wine. Broad, muscular tannins grip dark, tarry flavors of plum and blackberry even as the wine’s ample alcohol (15 percent) warms the fruit tones and adds a peppery bite to the finish. Hints of mint and licorice begin to emerge with air, but this is a wine to forget about for at least five years, giving those massive tannins time to soften.
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.