Winemaker Notes
Deep garnet red. Intense aroma with clean scents of wild rose, vanilla, licorice and spices. Feather the resin of pine and tobacco. Taste is full and elegant, full bodied, with tannins in evidence, with recurring olfactory sensations. Enjoyable are the spicy and woody notes that blend perfectly.
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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James Suckling
Mellow red cherries and earthy, lightly leathery nuances make a forward, complex nose, which leads to a palate with simple red strawberries. Acidity is salient. A nicely cut finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a beautiful growing site in the Barolo township that consistently delivers structure and depth, the 2015 Barolo Sarmassa offers a slightly austere and firm personality that puts the wine in a good position in terms of its future bottle aging potential. This Barolo reveals thick, etched lines with dark fruit, plum, spice and tangy licorice. The wine appears direct, fruit-forward and suitably propped up by its thick inner fiber. Some 20,000 bottles were made.
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Wine Spectator
Rich, exhibiting black cherry, plum, spice and tar flavors, this red features a muscular structure. Balanced and long, echoing spice and tar notes on the aftertaste. Best from 2022 through 2036.
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.