Winemaker Notes
This wine is bright garnet red in color with orange tints. Pleasing and immediate, it offers scents of flowers and light, delicate spices. The bouquet is agreeably rounded, with just the right balance between pleasantness and elegance. The aftertaste is very harmonious with a long, mineral, aromatic finish. Serve with hearty meat dishes such as braised and roast beef, game, aged cheeses, or even—why not? — from first course to last.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Entrancingly deep, red and blue-rose aromas here with an ethereal, dried-leaf and herb edge and pristine red cherries. The palate has very impressive, fine and tight tannins and a fresh, pure core of red-cherry and plum flavor. Impeccably focused finish. Try from 2023.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Barolo Cascina Nuova is a dark and concentrated expression that offers succulence and richness with a full load of ripe summer plum and blackberry. There is softness here with black and purple fruit, natural rubber and savory spice. Pair this wine with a hearty beef en croute and roasted vegetables.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of rose, red berry and wild herbs are front and center on this fresh, refined red. On the bright palate, taut, polished tannins and good acidity accompany juicy raspberry, white pepper and star anise. Drink 2020–2025.
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Wine & Spirits
Walter Fissore culls the fruit for this wine from younger vines in Novella’s Ravera cru. Floral and red-fruited, the 2015 unfolds with layers of crunchy cherry fruit, fennel, orange peel and licorice. The firm tannins give a cool, mineral tautness to the finish. Delicious now, it will be even better in a couple of years.
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Wine Spectator
A supple texture and harmony are the hallmarks of this alluring red, setting you up for pure flavors of cherry, raspberry, licorice, mint and tobacco. A solid backbone of tannins provides support. This should develop nicely over the medium term. Best from 2021 through 2033.
The Cogno family has been making wine for four generations in Piedmont. In 1990, Elvio Cogno left a long and fruitful partnership with the venerable Barolo producer Marcarini at La Morra and bought a splendid, historic 18th-century farmhouse on the top of Bricco Ravera, a hill near Novello in the Langhe area. (Novello is one of the 11 communes in which Barolo is produced.) The farm was surrounded by 11 hectares (27.18 acres) of steeply sloped vineyards. Elvio restored the manor, converted the old granaries to wine cellars and founded his eponymous winery. For the next 20 years he devoted himself to the winemaking traditions handed down to him by his father and grandfather.
Elvio, in turn, has now passed the torch to his daughter, Nadia, and her husband, Valter Fissore, who has worked beside Elvio for 25 years. Following in the footsteps of Elvio the maestro, Elvio Cogno winery continues to produce elegant wines without altering the traditions, styles and flavors of the Langhe, with its breathtaking quilted landscape and unique grape varieties.
The Elvio Cogno winery sits at the top of Bricco Ravera, a hill near Novello in the Langhe area of Piedmont, one of the 11 communes in which Barolo is produced. Ravera is the finest cru of Novello, encircling the top of the hill and the winery, reaching a 380-meter (1,246-foot) elevation, with breathtaking views in all directions.
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.