Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
A beautiful Barolo, rich and saturated with black cherry, blackberry, spice and mineral flavors. This is elegant, yet shows a solid masculinity that provides a firm structure for aging. Hints of licorice and tar emerge on the long finish. Best from 2013 through 2033. 583 cases made.
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Wine Enthusiast
The 2006 Barolo Margheria is an imposing, weighty wine packed with dark red fruit, scorched earth, spices and licorice. Though still impressively clenched and tight, the Margheria seems to have enough fruit to balance out its structural components. Today, the wine is remarkable for its sheer power and length, both of which augur well for the future. Anticipated maturity: 2016-2026.
Giampaolo Pira’s Barolos are some of the most massive, rich wines readers are likely to come across, but they rarely fail to deliver the goods. Like most producers, Pira has begun to reduce the level of small, new oak barrels in his Barolos, and the results are striking. The Barolo and Barolo Margheria are both aged in cask. The Marenca is aged in medium-size 500-liter barrels, while the Vigna Rionda sees smaller 225-liter French oak barrels. Though soft spoken, Giampaolo Pira is among Piedmont’s most ambitious young growers, as these wines fully attest.
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.