Winemaker Notes
Very intense ruby red with garnet reflections. Fresh to the nose with mature fruits, spicy, tobacco, darker fruits, and licorice. Warm and elegant, with minty and spicy notes.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I got a sneak peek at the Elio Altare 2019 Barolo Riserva Cerretta Vigna Bricco, although it is too early to review the wine at this time. It won't hit the market until the fall of 2024. From what we can gather now, we are in for a special prize. This vintage is dark and generously concentrated with black fruit flavors and firm tannins for structural support. The 2019 shows power and a fully loaded style.
Barrel Sample: 96-98 -
Decanter
Silvia Altare purchased 0.9ha in Cerretta in 2016, ‘when it was way cheaper’, she says. The vineyard is at the top of the hill at 390m, with a full southwest to southeast exposure. Exotic scents of spice, scorched earth, vanilla and pressed violet are settling in nicely. The palate is densely packed with liquorice-infused black cherry laminated between toasty oak and polished, grippy tannins. This needs longer for its substantial layers to coalesce, but extraordinary balance is already evident. Grilled bay leaf to close.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Also yet to be released is the 2019 Barolo Riserva Cerretta Vigna Bricco, which is deep and expressive of this structured vintage and textbook Serralunga power. It’s sanguine and deep with notes of leather, ripe cherries, dark stony earth, sage, and floral perfume. Fabulous all around, it fills the palate with rich, well-defined tannins, gravelly angular texture, refreshing acidity, and savory notes of tea leaf and truffle on the finish. It’s a contemplative wine built to last the long haul over the next several decades.
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Wine Spectator
A light touch of new oak lends cinnamon, vanilla and sandalwood accents, with core flavors of cherry, currant, rose, tar, green tea and eucalyptus. Detailed and harmonious, offering a smooth texture and excellent length.
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.