Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Bright, combining cherry, earth, iron and green tea flavors with a solid tannic structure. Maintains energy and resonates through the long finish. Shows fine intensity midpalate. Best from 2023 through 2040.
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James Suckling
A rich Barolo with earthy aromas and flavors, as well as ripe dark-cherry and spiced hazelnut-biscuit notes and dried rose petals. The palate delivers a similarly soulful, earthy and richly fruited impression with an abundance of fine, ripe tannins. A delicious 2015 Barolo. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
On the nose, the 2015 Barolo Coste di Rose offers dry and almost dusty notes of crushed stone and camphor ash followed by tight berry and wild blueberry. There is a floral component to the wine as well, with blue flower, lavender and dried rose. This vintage plays forward the differences between the vineyard crus of Barolo with enormous precision and individual identity. This expression remains slightly more delicate and compact in terms of its inner fiber.
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Wine Enthusiast
French oak, toasted hazelnut, fragrant purple flower and menthol aromas slowly appear in the glass. On the linear, rather austere palate, dried herbs and a hint of coffee bean accent cranberry and blood orange alongside taut, close-grained tannins.
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.