Winemaker Notes
Dark red color, with aromas of licorice and blue and blackberry. Full-bodied nebbiolo, with silky tannins and a long elegant finish. A wonderful balance of elegance and power.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Rich and brooding, this red features black cherry, raspberry, tar, leather and licorice flavors. Dense and complex, with a detailed matrix holding the flavors together. This will need time to integrate the dusty tannins, but shows excellent potential from the balance and length. Best from 2018 through 2036.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2010 Barolo Bric del Fiasc was the first single vineyard expression made by Scavino in 1978. Next year, Scavino will release a special magnum of wine from the 1988 vintage. The wine was back then, and is now, fermented with a submerged cap. This is a bright and intense wine with a profound inner beauty and balance. The wine rolls off the tongue in silky waves. The finish is extra-long, fresh and bursting with energy. This is a wine to set aside for ten years or more. The tannins already show a good degree of softness, but this wine is at the humble start of its evolution.
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James Suckling
Fabulous aromas of black fruits and shitake mushrooms with hints of bark. Full body, with wonderful firm tannins that are polished and refined. Needs at least three or four years of bottle age.
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.