Winemaker Notes
The 2014 Barolo Riserva Vigna Elena is medium-bodied and impressively balanced. The bouquet offers rose petal, white pepper, balsam herb, dry flowers and a hint of sweet tobacco. The mouthfeel is refreshing and determined, with a sense of austerity that culminates in an ethereal aftertaste. It is a Barolo filled with absolute class, lifted by a subtle texture of gracious tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Beguiling aromas of pressed rose, perfumed berry, dark spice and new leather mingle together on this fragrant, enticing red. Showing extraordinary finesse, the chiseled delicious palate delivers juicy raspberry, tart red cherry, cinnamon, star anise and chopped mint. A smoky mineral note graces the finish while taut lithe tannins and bright acidity provide elegant support—another beauty from what was overall a difficult vintage. Drink 2022–2034.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Elvio Cogno portfolio concludes with the special 2014 Barolo Riserva Ravera Vigna Elena. This wine from the cooler 2014 vintage stands far apart from the other new releases from the 2015 and 2016 vintages also hitting the market at this time. Ephemeral, fragile and delicate, the wine shows a softer caliber of fruit, with wild berry, cassis, smoke, tar and powdered licorice. There are earthy notes at the back with truffle essence and forest floor. This vintage offers a heightened level of complexity and nuance. This wine is a pure expression of the Rosé clone of Nebbiolo that is known for its lighter color and delicate aromas. A mere 3,000 bottles exist.
Rating:96+ -
Wine & Spirits
Vigna Elena is a single, sandy plot in the Ravera cru that is planted exclusively to nebbiolo rosé, a late-ripening variety once thought to be a clone of nebbiolo but now considered distinct yet closely related. In a growing season like 2014, with a cool and rainy summer followed by a spectacular September, this late ripening worked to the wine’s advantage, giving the fruit an extra two weeks to soak up the autumn sunshine. The wine smells of roses—petals, leaves and stems—and tastes of tart cherry and pomegranate with undercurrents of fresh tobacco. Lithe and lively, with supple tannins and brisk acidity, it may not be one of Valter Fissore’s longest-lived wines, yet it offers a fascinating and appealing interpretation of this challenging vintage.
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James Suckling
A tight, firm Barolo with dried-mushroom, floral and dark-berry aromas and flavors. It’s full-bodied and chewy with a linear flow of tannins and acidity through the center, yet it remains focused and transparent with beautiful character. Better after 2022.
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Wine Spectator
This is elegant and supple, featuring cherry, strawberry, eucalyptus and iron flavors fused to a firm backbone of acidity and tannins. Fresh and racy, this glides to a long finish. Give this another year or two. Best from 2022 through 2040.
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.