Winemaker Notes
The Cerretta site is the Germano family’s ancestral vineyard, located right below the house were Sergio’s mother, Rosanna, currently lives. It makes for structured Barolo. It shows the typical Serralunga dark chocolate character strongly, with a clear sandalwood/tobacco note. Ages superbly.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Barolo Cerretta is expressive with purity and concentrated notes of raspberry eau de vie, wildflowers, and fresh sage. This carries to the palate with clarity and focus, with ripe red cherry, blood orange, and salty earth. This exceptional wine from Ettore Germano has another gear for the range. Drink 2025-2040.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Barolo Cerretta has some ripe fruit, dried raspberry and candied cherry that evoke the sensations you would associate with a hot vintage. However, this vintage was warmest toward the end but quite cool and humid at the beginning of the growing season. The wine is streamlined and tight. That lean consistency contributes to its overall elegance and polish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Floral aromas of rose and iris mingle with bright red berry and mint on this fragrant, elegantly structured red. All about finesse, the vibrant palate features red cherry, pomegranate, star anise and cinnamon alongside smooth, silky tannins. Bright acidity provides balance and energy. It's already showing beautifully but will age well for years. Drink 2023–2033.
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.