Winemaker Notes
It comes from the Cru of Castelletto from the youngest part of the vineyard. It is aged in oak barrels. With a garnet red color and a floral and balsamic bouquet, in the mouth the tannins are gentle and balanced.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
The wine strikes an engaging chord with a nose rich in baking spices, cracked pepper, and dried herbs, grounded by an undercurrent of forest floor and the black-raspberry preserves. It fills the mouth with density, brimming with ripe red berries, yet remains lifted with tannins that are sweet and well-integrated, lending a structure that frames the fruit without diminishing its vibrancy. This wine delivers an intriguing contrast, offering a different nuance with each sip. Drink now through 2045.
Cellar Selection -
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Barolo Castelletto, tasted alongside the 2021, pours an almost identical medium red color but shows slightly more richness and a sweet floral perfume on the nose, with preserved strawberries, cherries, sweet herbs, licorice, and dewy earth. Medium-bodied, with a bit more flesh on the palate, it offers ripe tannins and greater immediacy in the vintage.
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.