Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A soft, luscious Barolo with succulent, ripe strawberries and cherries with some bark and hazelnuts. Medium-bodied with fine, firm tannins and lots of subtle character at the finish. Drink after 2023.
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Wine Spectator
This red is all about finesse and elegance, with pretty red fruit flavors—strawberry, cherry and currant—matched to iron and hay accents and well-mannered tannins. Harmonious and almost approachable now, yet should develop over the next two decades. Best from 2023 through 2040.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is one of three single-vineyard wines in the Fratelli Revello portfolio. With fruit from La Morra, the Fratelli Revello 2016 Barolo Gattera shows good volume and ample succulence; however, the drinking style remains accessible and immediate. Gattera reveals soft, silky tannins, and the bouquet opens to a pretty mixture of berry fruits, wild cherry and rose. On the back end, you get spice, tar and smoke. Some St. Louis-style ribs would do nicely here.
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Wine Enthusiast
Underbrush, dark-skinned berry and leather aromas take center stage. The taut concentrated palate offers blackberry jam, star anise and black pepper alongside tightly wound tannins and heat of evident alcohol. Drink 2025–2034.
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.