Winemaker Notes
Garnet red with orange-colored highlights. Complex aromas, very fruity, elegant, and intense. Excellent body with power and stuffing, full, well-balanced.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Perfumed and radiant, this beguiling Barolo opens with heady scents of cranberry, crushed rose petal and wild herbs. Boasting extreme elegance and energy, the almost ethereal palate delivers succulent strawberry, red cherry, star anise and orange zest set against polished tannins and racy acidity. A mineral note on the finish lends tension and depth. This is all about finesse and complexity and is a wonderful expression of the vintage. It shows more aging potential than many 2014s. Drink 2022–2034.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From the celebrated vineyard site in Monforte d'Alba, the 2014 Barolo Perno is very in line with the vintage. By that I mean that the wine is streamlined in terms of its consistency and marked in terms of the acidic freshness and tannic bite it offers. The 2014 Barolos tend to be more rigid but also more compact, and that's the impression I get here. The best part of this beautiful wine is the sharp mineral note that appears on the finish. It serves to elegantly tie up any loose ends.
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.