Winemaker Notes
Ruby red in color with orange reflections. An intense bouquet, with tertiary notes of rose, leather, tobacco and emerging notes of violet and tar. The palate is ample and embracing, with prevailing impressions of a soft, persistent long finish.
Lecinquevigne is perfect for braised meat , game, mushrooms and aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is really creamy and delicious with chocolate, hazelnut, dried-berry and walnut character. Round and chewy with polished tannins, it turns ripe and beautiful. Such pure fruit.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is a blend of the five vineyard sites farmed by Damilano, and if you look at the single-vineyard wines in this portfolio, you see Brunate, Liste, Cerequio, Cannubi and Raviole. The 2016 Barolo Lecinquevigne offers a 360-degree view of Barolo with pretty primary fruit backed by elegant tannins and mid-weight fruit fiber. The wine is a happy sum of its various parts, and as expected, you can't really make out the characteristics of any one unique growing site. That's exactly the philosophy behind a blended wine like Lecinquevigne. The wine ages in large oak casks for 24 months.
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Wine Spectator
There are plenty of savory notes—eucalyptus, juniper and thyme—reconciled by cherry and earth flavors in this red, which shows a midpalate sweetness before the pointed tannins emerge. The finish is long and satisfying.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lecinquevigne is produced from five vineyards in the communes of Barolo, Grinzane Cavour, and Monforte, and was aged for 24 months in large barrels of 20-100 hectoliters. The 2016 Barolo Lecinquevigne has classic aromas of tar, dried leather, cherry, and violets. Its structure is up-front, with tannic grip and driving acidity, fresh cranberry, orange rind, and clove. The 2016 is tightly wound and will benefit from cellaring 3-5 years.
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Wine Enthusiast
Pressed rose, woodland-berry and menthol aromas take center stage. It's full bodied and tense, offering dried cherry, cranberry and licorice framed in tight fine-grained tannins that leave a drying close.
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Wine & Spirits
An assembly of fruit from vines in five different communes of Barolo, this approachable wine offers flavors of dark cherry, tobacco and cocoa wrapped in round, supple tannins.
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.