Winemaker Notes
This wine is ruby, tending towards garnet, in color. The nose has intense notes of roses and violets, accompanied by a touch of damp earth and ripe red fruit. The tannins are very persistent yet soft, suggesting that the wine will take a long time to evolve.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Impressive, serious and savory with notes of forest berries, dried herbs and warm spices with a touch of Grand Marnier as well. Medium to full body with firm tannins. Bright with a verticality at the center, built around crisp acidity and crunchy red currants. Yet it is plain with volume at the edges and a chewiness towards the long finish. Try after 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Oddero 2020 Barolo Brunate definitely shows the austerity and power of this celebrated MGA site in La Morra. There's a strong mineral element with ferrous earth or rusty nail. The fruit is dark and spicy with baked currant or spiced plum. This is a solid and compact Barolo with a big, fleshy style. Its tannic firmness and freshness give it runway to age. A mere 1,700 bottles were produced.
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Wine Spectator
A solidly built red, evoking cherry, cranberry, blood orange, earth and underbrush flavors. Its tannins are thick, yet there's plenty of fruit, and this finds its equilibrium and a sense of gracefulness in the end.
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.