Winemaker Notes
Elegant and harmonious on the nose with a soft, dry palate and velvety tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This Barbaresco means business, opening with notes of dark cherries and black fruits that swagger across the glass and palate while dried herbs, tea leaves, and classic tar and roses remind you where you are. The wine fills your mouth corner to corner, with a richness that's both generous and structured. Think of it as the broad-shouldered cousin who still knows how to dress for dinner. Serious stuff, but with charm to spare. Drink from 2027.
Cellar Selection -
James Suckling
This wine shows earth, strawberries and melon with a floral touch on the nose. The attack is full-bodied with weight and concentration, ripe fruity tannins, juicy acidity and a poised finish. It needs time to develop more complexity. Try from 2026.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Fontanabianca 2022 Barbaresco Serraboella is a little closed at first. Fruit comes from a 0.6-hectare site in Serraboella with southwest exposures on clay soils. It feels a little clinched or tight. You need to coax the aromas out of the glass with extra swirling. But they do come through with black cherry, licorice, sambuca and grilled herb. The Serraboella has a darker side to its fruit profile from clay-heavy soils.
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.
A wine that most perfectly conveys the spirit and essence of its place, Barbaresco is true reflection of terroir. Its star grape, like that in the neighboring Barolo region, is Nebbiolo. Four townships within the Barbaresco zone can produce Barbaresco: the actual village of Barbaresco, as well as Neive, Treiso and San Rocco Seno d'Elvio.
Broadly speaking there are more similarities in the soils of Barbaresco and Barolo than there are differences. Barbaresco’s soils are approximately of the same two major soil types as Barolo: blue-grey marl of the Tortonion epoch, producing more fragile and aromatic characteristics, and Helvetian white yellow marl, which produces wines with more structure and tannins.
Nebbiolo ripens earlier in Barbaresco than in Barolo, primarily due to the vineyards’ proximity to the Tanaro River and lower elevations. While the wines here are still powerful, Barbaresco expresses a more feminine side of Nebbiolo, often with softer tannins, delicate fruit and an elegant perfume. Typical in a well-made Barbaresco are expressions of rose petal, cherry, strawberry, violets, smoke and spice. These wines need a few years before they reach their peak, the best of which need over a decade or longer. Bottle aging adds more savory characteristics, such as earth, iron and dried fruit.