Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
The freshness and firmness of this young 2017 Barbaresco is impressive. The wine is tight and reserved, but suggests greatness, offering cherries, dark cherries, dried flowers and crushed stones. Intense tannins. This is a wine for the cellar. Give it five or six years of bottle age. Try after 2027.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2017 Barbaresco Riserva Camp Gros Martinenga is ripe with a bit darker tone, offering notes of anise, grenadine, and cedar. It is medium-bodied, with a firm core of fruit and earth, as well as freshness and a ripe tannin structure. Its notes pf tea leaves, bergamot, and red cherry are long on the palate. Hold this another year and drink 2024-2040.
-
Wine Spectator
A pretty red, this evokes rose petal, cherry, strawberry, eucalyptus, iron, vanilla and wild herb aromas and flavors. Both firm and elegant, with dusty tannins lining the long, complex, spicy finish. Best from 2025 through 2042.
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.
A wine that most perfectly conveys the spirit and essence of its place, Barbaresco is true reflection of terroir. Its star grape, like that in the neighboring Barolo region, is Nebbiolo. Four townships within the Barbaresco zone can produce Barbaresco: the actual village of Barbaresco, as well as Neive, Treiso and San Rocco Seno d'Elvio.
Broadly speaking there are more similarities in the soils of Barbaresco and Barolo than there are differences. Barbaresco’s soils are approximately of the same two major soil types as Barolo: blue-grey marl of the Tortonion epoch, producing more fragile and aromatic characteristics, and Helvetian white yellow marl, which produces wines with more structure and tannins.
Nebbiolo ripens earlier in Barbaresco than in Barolo, primarily due to the vineyards’ proximity to the Tanaro River and lower elevations. While the wines here are still powerful, Barbaresco expresses a more feminine side of Nebbiolo, often with softer tannins, delicate fruit and an elegant perfume. Typical in a well-made Barbaresco are expressions of rose petal, cherry, strawberry, violets, smoke and spice. These wines need a few years before they reach their peak, the best of which need over a decade or longer. Bottle aging adds more savory characteristics, such as earth, iron and dried fruit.