Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
If you consider the Barolo playbook at Fratelli Alessandria, the 2016 Barolo Gramolere takes the intensity and power up one more notch. You get black fruit and blackberry, but there is enough vibrant red fruit to keep this wine aligned with the more elegant and traditional side of Barolo. The wine shows compelling infinities with both the powerful and the elegant side of Nebbiolo. There are noticeable mineral notes and even a spot of savory salinity. However, Gramolere definitely has the power and inner grit to withstand long cellar aging.
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Wine & Spirits
This is Vittore Alessandria’s only Barolo made with fruit from outside of Verduno, coming from a plot inherited by his mother. The wine’s texture is unusually suave and silky for a Barolo from the heavy clay soils of Monforte d’Alba. Scents of dried rose petals enhance flavors of macerated cherry, licorice and orange zest that wash across the palate in a mouthwatering wave, chased by vibrant acidity.
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Wine Enthusiast
Pressed rose, camphor, woodland berry, dark spice and new leather are just some of the aromas you'll find on this fragrant red. Radiant, structured and boasting finesse and depth, the palate delivers raspberry compote, mature morello cherry, cinnamon and menthol framed in taut refined tannins. It's well balanced, with bright acidity. Drink 2024–2036. Cellar Selection.
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James Suckling
A rich 2016 with lots of sweet strawberry, cedar and walnut aromas and flavors. It’s full-bodied and chewy with lots of polished tannins and a fresh, linear finish. Solid. Try after 2024.
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.