Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
Intense aromas of stones, slate, dried strawberries and lemons. Full body, chewy tannins and a powerful finish. Shows great depth and intensity. Better in 2021.
-
Wine Spectator
Enticing aromas of flowers, cherry, strawberry and wild herbs rise from this harmonious, graceful red. Supple despite a firm underlying structure, with finesse and an aftertaste that unfolds like a lazy summer afternoon.
-
Wine Enthusiast
What a fabulous vintage for this fragrant, radiant wine. Opening with alluring scents of iris, rose, culinary spice and perfumed berry, the focused palate delivers crushed strawberry, red cherry, cinnamon and star anise. It’s loaded with finesse, thanks to firm ultrarefined tannins and bright acidity. Drink 2022–2033.
Cellar Selection -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The beautiful 2013 Barolo Bricco Ambrogio comes from the Scavino family's biggest single-vineyard parcel that measures five hectares. This is a more structured and tannic expression of Nebbiolo that could use a few extra years of cellar aging to move it forward. The wine sports thick concentration and luscious fruit flavors that peel off in thick and succulent layers. Blackberry is followed by dried cherry, leather and spice. Only a handful (maybe five?) producers make Barolo from Bricco Ambrogio. This is a seriously gorgeous wine.
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.