Winemaker Notes
Ruby red in color with orange hues, this wine offers an intense and complex bouquet with notes of violet, red berries (like raspberry and currant), and more deep aromas of licorice, mint and spices. On the palate, the wine is rich and full bodied, showing great structure, firm and velvety tannins, and a persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Purity of fruit comes through with a plum, porcini and rose-petal character, which follow through to a medium to full body. A round and juicy finish. Delicious now, but will age nicely in the future.
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Wine Spectator
Leads off with scents of graphite, mineral and menthol, giving way to flavors of cherry and black currant. Dense and powerful, with big, dusty tannins guarding the finish for now. Needs time. Best from 2022 through 2045.
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Wine & Spirits
This wine opens with appealing scents and flavors of red cherry, tobacco and cedar, though they are tamped down by rigid tannins and warm alcohol. This needs time for the fruit tones to flesh out and match the wine’s powerful structure.
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.