Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The nose of the 2020 Barolo Monprivato is highly expressive and perfumed with notes of wild strawberries, fresh cut fennel, springtime herbs, and wet stones. The palate is seamless and similar to 2018 in terms of its elegance, but this wine has more structure, well-defined, even tannins, and a bit more body through the mid-palate while still retaining a very approachable and joyful feel. This will be a wine with a wide window for enjoyment and is one of the highlights of this vintage for me. It offers so much pleasure now, and I anticipate it will continue to improve over the coming decades.
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Vinous
The 2020 Barolo Monprivato is without question one of the finest wines to emerge from these cellars in many years. Translucent and layered, with captivating textural depth, the 2020 is positively stellar. Bright red-toned fruit, chalk, mint, white pepper, blood orange and dried rose petal come alive in the glass. This statuesque Barolo simply has it all. It's great to see the Mascarello family making truly pedigreed wines once again. To find a Monprivato of this exceptionally high level, readers will have to go back to the 1989. That's how outstanding the 2020 is.
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Wine Spectator
Exuding strawberry, cherry, rose and mineral aromas and flavors, this elegant red is vigorous yet shows superb harmony and equilibrium. Vibrant acidity and refined tannins lend support as the aftertaste echoes the red fruit notes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Owing to a warm and sunny vintage, the Giuseppe Mascarello 2020 Barolo Monprivato reveals a soft and generous personality. Silky tannins and a very pleasurable display of bright cherry fruit, cassis, sweet almond and blue flower. It appears lifted and bright to the palate and tastes great straight out of the gate.
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.