Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Wow. Love the perfumes to this with plums, cherries and hints of flowers. Full body, chewy tannins, polish and precision. Relatively delicate finish. Drink in 2018.
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Wine Enthusiast
Enticing scents of iris, violet, menthol and exotic spice emerge in the glass. Elegant and fresh, the polished, delicious palate delivers juicy Marasca cherry, crushed raspberry and a potpourri of baking spices. It's beautifully balanced, with bright acidity and silky smooth tannins. While it's already accessible, it will also age for years. Drink 2018–2028.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Paolo Scavino 2013 Barolo sports the depth and elegance that famously characterizes the house style. Fruit is sourced from various points across the appellation and the specific blend changes according to the needs of the vintage. Among the various Barolo wines made by this estate, this wine is the most accessible and approachable for sure. The bouquet offers compelling aromas of black fruit and dried blackberry and there's plenty of spice, licorice and tar at the back. The wine shows its complexity as well as its varietal purity. You'll notice the handwritten signature of patron Enrico Scavino on the front label.
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Wine Spectator
Intense and firmly grounded, this offers aromas of cherry, licorice, wild herbs and tobacco, with dense, dusty tannins and excellent length. Complex and balanced, this should hit its stride in a few years. Best from 2020 through 2032.
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.