Winemaker Notes
With its big structure, this wine is particularly adapted to main courses of red meats, braised dishes and game in general. An ideal accompaniment for cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Benefitting from southeast exposures, the 2010 Barolo Sarmassa is a deeply layered and concentrated wine with immediate aromas of spice, mahogany, ripe cherry, pressed blackberry and shaved truffle. Barolo Sarmassa offers a very attractive smoothness that is especially evident on the finish. The wine fades slowly leaving a pretty, vanilla aftertaste. Drink: 2016-2028. Rating: 93+
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Wine Enthusiast
This intense wine opens with an alluring fragrance of crushed flower, vineyard dust, bright berry, leather, cooking spices and balsamic notes. The structured palate delivers ripe black cherry, prune, cracked black pepper, toast and licorice alongside vibrant acidity. The fruit richness stands up to the assertive tannins but it ends on a mouth-drying finish. Drink 2020–2040.
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James Suckling
Aromas of flint, smoke, blackberries, dried strawberries and meat. Full-bodied and chewy with rather dry tannins, but there’s a seriousness and muscle to it. Notes of meat and toasted oak.
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Wine Spectator
Pure and fruity, evoking black cherry and plum flavors. The dense, dusty tannins are evident, but overall this shows more fruit than wild herb, licorice or tobacco notes. Excellent length. Best from 2016 through 2025.
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.