Winemaker Notes
It expresses its best potential when served with meat dishes, rich in intense and persistent aromas and flavors, such as joints of lamb or kid. Also, thanks to its marked tannins, it is simply superb with the bitter-sweet alternation of furry and feathered game.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Camphor, underbrush, spice and brandy-soaked cherry are just some of the aromas you'll find in this gorgeous red. The full-bodied palate combines firmness with finesse, delivering raspberry compote, ripe Marasca cherry, licorice and tobacco flavors framed in assertive, fine-grained tannins. It's youthfully austere and needs time to fully develop but it's already impressive. Drink 2025–2035. Cellar Selection.
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Wine & Spirits
The core of dark- and red-cherry flavors in this wine seems to glow with energy, surging outward as the wine gains notes of graphite and subtle spice. This Barolo offers beautiful balance in the warm 2015 growing season, the pedigree of the Vigna Rionda site showing through in the cool, ferrous tannins that accentuate the brightness of those cherry fruit tones. The flavors are precise and persistent, drawing out on a long and riveting finish.
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Wine Spectator
Very pure, this red exudes cherry, strawberry and currant fruit, shaded by iron, sage, white pepper and tobacco. Firm yet enticing, with superb balance and a finish that goes on and on. Excellent intensity on a slim frame.
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.