Winemaker Notes
Garnet-red color with ruby highlights. Intense perfume with clean scents of ripe fruit, dried roses, tobacco and spices. Full, elegant and austere flavor with a good body and lingering hints of the olfactory sensations.
This wine with a big structure complements red meats, stewed dishes and aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
From Marchesi di Barolo arrives a very good village blend. Intense cherry aromas are joined by rose, cinnamon, liquorice and rhubarb root, with bitter orange appearing in both aroma and flavour. The full body is allied to firm, zesty acidity and austere yet ripe tannins, well balanced with a long, sweet finish showcasing liquorice and flowers. A great character, albeit not for the novice Barolo drinker.
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Wine Spectator
Rich, evoking plum, earth and leather flavors, with a hint of eucalyptus and dense tannins providing support. This feels open, nevertheless, and just needs time to resolve the tannins. Balanced and lingers on the finish. Best from 2026 through 2042.
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Wine Enthusiast
This has a subtle nose that eventually reveals camphor, forest floor, violet and oak-driven spice. The polished, already accessible palate is rather light on its feet, offering strawberry compote, sour cherry and star anise alongside bright acidity. Fine-grained tannins leave a rather drying finish.
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.