Winemaker Notes
Dark garnet red. Elegant, round nose with lingering fruity, spicy, balsamic and mineral undertones. Strong, warm body, with powerful aromas and well-balanced flavors. Long, intense finish. Lends itself to lengthy ageing, with a cellar life even extending to over fifteen years.
Pair with roast veal, rump steak cooked in Barolo wine, and mature cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Notes of dried red berries, dried citrus peel, chocolate and dried herbs with some savory and earthy character. Hints of tea leaves and undergrowth. Medium- to full-bodied, dry and juicy with fine, slightly chewy tannins. It shows austerity but with a refined and polished nature. Lingering and broad. Shows focus and harmony. Better after 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Barolo Ginestra Riserva (in a heavy glass bottle) has a sweet note of dried currant or kirsch that evokes a vintage that saw a lot of summer sunshine and warm temperatures. The 2015 vintage regularly delivers roundness and exuberance that I think you can recognize across the appellation. This Riserva is plump and concentrated with extra fruit weight. It shows an unfortunate 15.5% alcohol content, which is a lot for a grape as delicately nuanced as Nebbiolo.
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Wine Spectator
A smoky, spicy version, this red evokes flavors of cherry, earth, smoky spices and iron. Firm and powerful, with a wide swath of muscular tannins, this is well-balanced overall, but could use a bit more time to integrate the tannins. Best from 2025 through 2047.
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.