Winemaker Notes
Garnet-red colored wine with ruby hues. Scent of floral aromas and red fruits of rare complexity, well blended with essences and spices. The taste is full, elegant and velvety, with soft and enveloping tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Captivating and vibrant, this Barolo lifts out of the glass with pristine aromatics of ripe red cherries, wild strawberries, and raspberries, complemented by delicate herbs and savory notes. Luscious red currants, pomegranate, and sweet spice dance on the palate, creating a mesmerizing tension. Resist temptation for even greater refinement. Drink now - 2045.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from Verduno, the 2020 Barolo Monvigliero is a bright red/ruby color and offers an expressive, rosy perfume of cranberries, dusty earth, and delicate spices. Medium-bodied, it’s very elegant and graceful on the palate’ with fine tannins, clean, evenly balanced acidity, and a nicely tapered finish. It’s quite appealing now but should have a solid 6-8 years ahead of it.
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James Suckling
Attractive spicy character here with vibrant red fruit, dried citrus peel and sandalwood. Medium-bodied, textured and chewy, yet it is fresh and juicy with a hint of raw mushroom and a dry, chalky finish. Better from 2028.
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Wine Spectator
This Barolo emphasizes the macerated cherry and raspberry fruit flavors, which fill out the round profile, revealing accents of menthol, iron and tobacco. Best from 2026 through 2039.
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.