Winemaker Notes
Barolo, produced with Nebbiolo grapes from the single vineyard in the town of Novello, is balanced and structured. The color is ruby red and tends to an intense garnet red with ageing. The bouquet is complex and combines freshness with elegance and finesse. A flavor with strong tannins but well-balanced and lingering. The grapes are harvested from the upper part of the vineyard.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2015 Barolo Sorì Gepin is quite showy today. Spice, orange peel and cedar notes lift the bouquet, revealing a lovely core of inner sweetness wrapped in a shroud of persistent but not overpowering tannins. All things considered, the 2015 has aged well. It’s a relatively approachable wine from La Spinona.
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James Suckling
This is very tight and focused with dried-strawberry, rust, conifer and burnt-orange aromas and flavors. It’s full-bodied, tight and powerful with solid tannins that turn round and attractive. Drink in 2023 and onwards.
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.