Winemaker Notes
The clay soils of Ginestra yield a darker, powerful Barolo, with aromatics of dark cherry, anise and leather. The mid palate is packed, with dense, black fruit touched with baking spice and earth. The finish is long and firm.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a vineyard located across from Gavarini Chiniera, this is a slightly more robust and concentrated wine. The 2018 Barolo Ginestra Casa Mate sources its fruit from a position at a slightly lower elevation with a bigger component of clay in the soils. The south and southeast-facing hillside is also more open to the horizon. These conditions give the Ginestra Casa Mate a broad texture and rich flavors of black and purple fruits. The wine is compact with dense texture that will relax over the next 10 years of age.
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Wine Spectator
A graceful, elegant red, featuring rose, strawberry, currant and cherry aromas and flavors. Reveals an underlying mineral streak and dovetails nicely on the finish, finding harmony and length. An excellent interpretation of the vintage.
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James Suckling
Aromas of dried and fresh strawberries with some tar and cedar follow through to a medium to full body with chewy tannins that are polished and attractive. Give this three or four years to come more together, but a pretty wine for the vintage.
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.