Winemaker Notes
Garnet red with orange-colored highlights; Nose: complex, very fruity, elegant, intense, spicy, with flowery touches; Taste: excellent body with power and stuffing, demanding, masculine, long, full.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is a true beauty. The Giuseppe Mascarello 2015 Barolo Monprivato borrows from the best of the Nebbiolo playlist. You get precision, abundance, focus and depth presented in proud and elegant fashion. Monprivato in Castiglione Falletto shows its worth as one of the best-performing sites in both 2015 and 2016. This warmer growing season presents red and purple fruit with cherry, plum and dried blackberry. A second wave of aromas washes over the senses with spice, licorice, tar and crushed limestone. The mouthfeel is stitched tightly together with interwoven layers of acidity, tannin and fleshy fruit. Rating: 97+
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Wine Spectator
Fresh, savory and supple in texture, delivering rose, cherry, plum, leather and wild herb aromas and flavors. Shows a hint of chocolate, but this is more about the purity of fruit. Rich and almost sumptuous, this red stays elegant, providing a vibrant structure for support. Fine length. Best from 2023 through 2043.
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.