Winemaker Notes
M. Marengo Barolo is a garnet red color. The nose is intense, elegant and fruity with red fruit aromas. Warm, balanced and integrated tannins on the palate with a persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is a generous and rather soft 2017 with berry, toffee, chocolate and walnut character. Full-bodied and round-textured with a flavorful finish. Drink in 2023, but already very attractive.
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Wine Spectator
Pretty cherry and currant aromas and flavors ply the dense texture in this lively, well-defined red, which shows excellent balance and energy, with floral, mineral and tobacco notes joining in and persisting on the complex finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This wine draws its fruit from the Serradenari, Boiolo, Fossati and Roncaglie vineyards in La Morra. The M. Marengo 2017 Barolo achieves a level of immediate elegance and balance that was by no means easy to achieve in this challenging and hot vintage. The Marengo family has successfully harnessed the floral and more graceful side of the vintage fruit, with wild berry and powdered licorice. You do feel the youthful tannic tightness in this release, so give this wine a few extra years to unwind and soften.
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.