Winemaker Notes
Full body vintage with ripe red fruit, solid tannic structure, good drinkability solid structure, intense minerality, spicy fruit, slow maturing tannins.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Incredible aromas of white truffle, meat, wet earth, lightly burnt orange peel and pure fruit. Medium-bodied and very compact, with a block of silky tannins that run through the palate and then come out at the end with a gorgeous texture. It’s very drinkable now, but will age wonderfully. This is a special release. They never made a serious blended riserva in their history.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This Riserva pours from the bottle with a medium dark appearance, showing more color saturation and fruit concentration than the other wines in this series. The Produttori del Barbaresco 2016 Barbaresco Riserva Montefico is a wine of power and density, and you sense this clearly in the aromatic determination and heft delivered here. (Like the other Riservas in this group, it clocks in at a 15% alcohol content.) The fruit tones veer toward dark purple and black, with plum and wild blackberries. There are earthy tones as well, with potting soil and iron ore. This wine plays its cards of volume and width with an expert hand, thanks to a blend of fruit from the vineyards of the Casetta, Grasso, Rocca and Vacca families.
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Wine Spectator
There is some weight and richness to this red, allied to cherry and plum flavors. Flourishing notes of iron, tobacco and black pepper add detail, while the dusty, nervous tannins emerge on the long finish. Shows more structure today, yet this has all the components in the right place.
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.
A wine that most perfectly conveys the spirit and essence of its place, Barbaresco is true reflection of terroir. Its star grape, like that in the neighboring Barolo region, is Nebbiolo. Four townships within the Barbaresco zone can produce Barbaresco: the actual village of Barbaresco, as well as Neive, Treiso and San Rocco Seno d'Elvio.
Broadly speaking there are more similarities in the soils of Barbaresco and Barolo than there are differences. Barbaresco’s soils are approximately of the same two major soil types as Barolo: blue-grey marl of the Tortonion epoch, producing more fragile and aromatic characteristics, and Helvetian white yellow marl, which produces wines with more structure and tannins.
Nebbiolo ripens earlier in Barbaresco than in Barolo, primarily due to the vineyards’ proximity to the Tanaro River and lower elevations. While the wines here are still powerful, Barbaresco expresses a more feminine side of Nebbiolo, often with softer tannins, delicate fruit and an elegant perfume. Typical in a well-made Barbaresco are expressions of rose petal, cherry, strawberry, violets, smoke and spice. These wines need a few years before they reach their peak, the best of which need over a decade or longer. Bottle aging adds more savory characteristics, such as earth, iron and dried fruit.