Winemaker Notes
Barolo Ravera is as extremely complex as it is balanced and elegant. Scents are spicy, with floral, red and black berries and tobacco notes. Acidity is always lively in the mouth, while it is full bodied with persistent but velvety, dense tannins.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of cedar, spice, leather, dust and dried strawberries follow through to a medium-bodied yet solid and dense palate with chewy tannins and a flavorful finish. Try in 2022.
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Jeb Dunnuck
From Monforte d’Alba, the 2015 Barolo has soft, baked strawberry aromas and notes of baking spice and dried roses. There is red cherry fruit, orange zest, and dusty earth, with a modest finish and fine tannins. It is in a good place for drinking now for its freshness. Drink 2021-2028.
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Wine Enthusiast
This opens with aromas evoking toasted hazelnut, scorched earth, camphor and a whiff of pipe tobacco. The taut palate offers dried cherry, espresso and a hint of ground clove accompanied by dusty tannins that leave a firm finish.
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Wine & Spirits
Sourced from Novello’s Ravera cru, this is light for the warm, dry 2015 vintage, and immediately appealing in its rose-scented cherry flavors. It’s ready to enjoy now, and a versatile bottle at the dinner table.
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Wine Spectator
Sourced from Novello’s Ravera cru, this is light for the warm, dry 2015 vintage, and immediately appealing in its rose-scented cherry flavors. It’s ready to enjoy now, and a versatile bottle at the dinner table.
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.