Winemaker Notes
A great wine for important dishes, red meats on the spit or grilled, game, "grande cuisine" white and red meat dishes and aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
Intense aromas of dried flowers and berries. Concentrated and full, with ripe fruit and supervelvety tannins. Long and gorgeous. Best after 2013. 575 cases made.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Barolo Conca is a deeply layered, regal wine imbued with tons of elegance and class. Here the fruit tends towards a darker shade of red fruit and the tannins are also a touch firmer than the Marcenasco. The oak is beautifully balanced in this vintage. Sweet menthol, spices and French oak linger on the understated finish. This is a terrific effort from Ratti. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2022.
-
Wine Enthusiast
Conca shares the extraordinary intensity demonstrated by Ratti’s Rocche cru, but is also distinguished by a delicate, more feminine side. The wine is beautifully stretched over fine aromas of exotic spice, white chocolate, dried flowers and blackberries. It ends with power and determination but does so in a charming, less overt manner.
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.