Winemaker Notes
This Barolo has a special value for our family and represents the history and tradition of blending different cru of Barolo. Our Barolo comes from the best plots of seven cru. The diversity of soils, exposure and altitude characterizes each of these small but very important terroir. Unifying these diversities, the Barolo offers harmony and complexity with an overall character of the zone.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A full and juicy red with a solid center palate of ripe fruit and chewy tannins. Medium- to full-bodied, round and rich. A lovely finish. Drink in 2020.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of darkskinned berry, French oak and a balsamic note emerge from the glass. The dense palate offers vanilla, roasted coffee bean, dried black cherry and oak-driven spice alongside assertive, rather astringent tannins. Drink after 2022.
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Wine Spectator
This starts out with plenty of cherry, plum and orange peel flavors, offset by iron, eucalyptus and tobacco accents. The finish is rustic, with the tannins flexing their muscles, yet this comes together in the end. A wine for the long haul. Best from 2023 through 2040.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Barolo represents a selection of fruit from seven individual vineyard parcels spread across Barolo's major townships. Fruit from those sites is vinified separately, and once each barrique is tasted, the final assembly is created. Barrels of wine that do not live up to the estate's quality standards are sold off as bulk wine. This is a beautiful wine that opens to cherry and blackberry flavors with elegant tones of crushed stone, smoke, licorice and tar. This is an excellent near or medium-term Barolo with accessible characteristics and lots of varietal purity.
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Wine & Spirits
Scavino’s classico Barolo blends fruit from three communes (Castiglione Falletto, Barolo and Serralunga d’Alba) to achieve a bright, cranberry-fruited Barolo. It would pair well with the soft gaminess of a roast turkey leg.
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.