Winemaker Notes
A wine of great class that expresses the elegance of the territory, of a brilliant garnet red turning slightly amber with time, exuberant in its fragrance of fruit and spices, of great body, full and velvety with a long final taste of goudron and spices.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Nebbiolo from the Einaudi family’s 5.8-acre Cannubi plot yielded an impressively focused wine in 2018. There’s an inner brightness and clarity to the dark fruit tones that is further enlivened by notes of orange peel and dark spice that carry through on the long finish.
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James Suckling
Fresh berry and citrus notes on the nose, together with leafy aromas. Medium-bodied with a linear start to the palate, followed by a medium build of grainy tannin. A lighter structure this year, but there’s some good focus and drive. Needs time to even out. Try from 2024.
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Wine Spectator
Sleek and expressive, this Barolo evokes floral, berry, eucalyptus and tar flavors. Though firm and moderately tannic, this shows freshness and a lively, lingering finish. Drink now.
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.