Winemaker Notes
Intense garnet in color, the nose shows floral and spicy notes perfectly blended: tobacco, cherries, cocoa and fresh raspberry highlights. The palate is rich, full-bodied and elegant.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This shows a lot of tar and roses with dried strawberries as well. Full-bodied with very, very fine tannins that coat your mouth, yet they are so velvety and set up the overall, focused and pure-fruit impression of the wine. Fantastic young Barolo. From organically grown grapes. Better in 2026, when the tannins will be more resolved.
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Wine Enthusiast
Made with certified organic grapes, this has aromas of underbrush, ripe dark-skinned berry, eucalyptus and French oak. The full-bodied palate reflects the nose, offering dried cherry, licorice, coconut and toasted hazelnut framed in taut, fine-grained tannins. Drink 2024-2032.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Barolo Monfalletto does an impressive job of showing the most detailed and elegant side of a vintage that threw quite a few curveballs at the vintners of the Langa and most of Italy because of heat and a lack of summer water reserves. This wine gently sidesteps all those difficulties to instead focus on the inner purity of the Nebbiolo grape. There is a fresh layer of wild cherry that quickly cedes to more substantial tones of earth, cedar and spice. The tannin is more present in the 2017. Monfalletto draws most of its fruit from the Gattera cru and some from Annunziata, both located in La Morra where this historic winery is located. This was an ample production of 46,000 bottles.
Rating: 93(+) -
Wine Spectator
Round, boasting plum, black cherry, earth and tar flavors. Offers chunky, dusty tannins that provide structure, with the balance tipping toward the tannins in the end.
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.