Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
New leather, menthol, tobacco and forest floor aromas are front and center on this fragrant alluring Barolo. Juicy and boasting extreme elegance, the savory palate delivers raspberry compote, strawberry, crushed mint and star anise. It's well balanced and focused, with bright acidity and taut refined tannins. Drink 2020–2032.
Editors' Choice -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Cerretta vineyard is distinguished by thick red clay soils at its lower elevations. This segment of the vineyard provides the power and structure that holds this wine so firmly together. Indeed, that sense of power and dark fruit momentum outpaces the delicate and nuanced characteristics that are generally attributed to the cooler and immediate 2014 vintage. The 2014 Barolo Cerretta is a powerhouse wine—packed tight with dark fruit, spice and licorice—that should hold steady over the next 10-20 years of cellar aging.
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Wine & Spirits
This wine’s gorgeous floral scents and crunchy red-cherry flavors hint at the appeal it will offer when the bold tannins have relented. It remains firm and austere for several days after opening, barely beginning to reveal the layers of cool herbs and dark minerals that complement its bright fruit. Keep this under wraps for at least five years.
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Wine Spectator
More savory than fruity, this red evokes black pepper, eucalyptus, menthol, tar, cherry and tobacco notes. Pure and elegant, with a wall of chewy tannins guarding the compact finish. Best from 2023 through 2038.
Luigi Baudana is one of the last garagiste estates in Langhe. With just 4 quality hectares, located in some of the most prestigious Barolo crus in Serralunga d'Alba. The wines of the Luigi Baudana collection are an expression of powerful, genuine and true-to-terroir wines, expressing the best of the Nebbiolo grape.
The origin of the cellar is lost in time: Baudana is the name of the family, but it is also the name of the vineyard and of the hamlet of Serralunga d'Alba, where the winery is located.
For over thirty years, Luigi and Fiorina Baudana have grown the vineyards that have belonged to their family for generations. They cared for their vineyards with the same tenderness of their own love and with the same warmth emanating from their cellar, born under the vaults of their home.
From the very beginning, the Vaira family have been impressed by Luigi and Fiorina's ambition, as well as pride in their work. Their mission every day is for Luigi and Fiorina to be proud of the vineyards and of the wines, whilst perpetuating their gestures and seeking for the authenticity of every single vineyard.
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.