Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is really perfumed and enticing, offering intense floral and citrus character with some cherry. It’s full-bodied, yet tight and very reserved, with a long, racy finish. Fantastic depth of fruit here. Outstanding purity, too. Better in 2025.
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Wine Spectator
This red boasts a beautiful balance between its cherry, strawberry, floral, eucalyptus and mineral aromas and flavors. Supple and elegant, despite the resonant tannins and lively acidity that boost the lingering aftertaste, with fine length. Don’t think about pulling the cork for five years.
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Wine Enthusiast
Forest floor, prune, leather and pipe tobacco aromas make their way to the forefront. Showing the heat of the vintage, it's full-bodied and concentrated, offering cherry marinated in spirits, licorice and the warmth of evident alcohol. Tightly knit, enveloping tannins provide firm, velvety support. Drink 2025–2032.
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Wine & Spirits
Fresh violet scents lead into flavors of crunchy cherry and seeded blackberry, all layered with notes of bitter chocolate. The wine finishes on lingering notes of warm spice, and its taut tannins will benefit from several years in the cellar.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A release of 3,000 bottles, the Luigi Baudana 2017 Barolo Cerretta is the most downplayed of these three wines and the least complicated from an aromatic point of view. A first wave of aromas is focused on wild rose and crushed flowers. More robust tones of ripe cherry, rusty earth and dark spice follow in time. This edition of Cerretta is surprisingly delicate and fine, going against almost everything we know about robust fruit from Serralunga d'Alba and the powerful 2017 vintage. The wine is counterintuitive in a way only Nebbiolo can be.
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.