Winemaker Notes
Garnet-red. On the nose vanilla, red mature fruits and spice hints Well-balanced sour, dry, delicate and velvety with fine tannins. Excellent aging potential.
Pair with delicate but structured first courses, hunting game foods, roasted meat, aged cheeses, or spicy cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
There’s a chopping-board’s worth of garlic, nutmeg and ginger here, decorating ripe notes of brambleberries and dark plums. The full body that follows is decked out in muscular tannins and dried fruit, but there’s steely acidity running through the center palate. Drink from 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Orlando Abrigo 2015 Barbaresco Montersino is a dark and thickly concentrated wine that offers more in terms of intensity and muscle than it does complexity or subtleties. This wine is immediate and powerful, and less nuanced as a result. It might be just the thing for a bowl of polenta and stewed meat by the fire. The Montersino cru is located in Treiso. It sees 50-year-old vines planted in limestone sandy soils.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of French oak, blue flower, camphor and dark spice lead the nose. On the palate, close-grained tannins provide the backbone for dried cherry, orange rind, grilled herb, game and clove. It has a firm, extremely drying finish. Give the tannins a few years to unwind then drink sooner rather than later.
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.