Winemaker Notes
Bright red color slightly amber over time, exuberant in the scent of fruit and spices, full-bodied, full and velvety with a long finish of tar and spices.
This wine pairs well with roasts, braised meats, fillets, pasta with complex sauces and medium-aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This exhibits violets and tar, as well as underbrush and a distant bitter-chocolate note. The palate is angular and incisive, well-constructed with a harmonious interplay between the focused acidity, fine grained tannins and delineated, fleshy fruit. Precise. Best ever from here. Better in 2028.
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Wine Spectator
A sleek, elegant red, silky in texture and linear in profile. Rose, macerated cherry, strawberry, mineral and spice flavors abound, while a line of energetic tannins shows up on the long finish. This wine's purity and structure show the potential of the vintage. Best from 2028 through 2047.
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Jeb Dunnuck
One of the overachievers of the vintage for a regional Barolo and a strong contender for top of the year lists, the 2021 Barolo Ludo pours a reflective brick red color and is attractive on the nose with notes of cinnamon sticks, fresh cherries, mossy earth, and anise. The palate offers a good balance of richness in the structure of its medium-bodied frame, with ripe tannins, lovely clarity of fruit, and refreshing ripe acidity. A gorgeous entry-level Barolo, it’s stunning now and has the potential to age with ease over the next 12-15 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Poderi Luigi Einaudi 2021 Barolo Ludo is light and delicate in appearance with a dark ruby shine. The bouquet has a lot going on with sweet cherry, cola, blue flower and spicy rosemary essence that comes through with more clarity the longer this wine stays in the glass. It offers young tannins that could surely benefit from more years of bottle age.
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Decanter
From the Latin ‘ludus’ which means playful, Ludo assembles young vine plots in Bussia, Terlo, Monvigliero and Cannubi. Aged in a mix of large cask and tonneaux, it proposes a brambly nose that recalls cranberry bush, wild currants, rooibos and baking spice. Midweight and streamlined but still textured, this is built around succulent wild red fruit. Elegant tannins are light and crisp, matched by enjoyably tart, brisk acidity. The finish is long, with a subtle mushroom accent. Makes you thirsty for more.
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Vinous
The 2021 Barolo Ludo is a very pretty entry-level offering designed for near-term drinking. Short time on the skins yielded a Barolo that emphasizes vibrant fruit, floral top notes and silky tannins. Sweet dried cherry, tobacco, cedar and crushed flowers linger. This is very nicely done.
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.