Winemaker Notes
Thanks to accuracy and traditional winemaking, followed by a 20 day maceration and 3 years of aging in wood and bottle, a great Barolo is created; austere, developed and elegant. The color of the wine is a redish hue with excellent perfumed notes of spice, leather, purple violets and the classic "goudron".
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a warm and sunny growing season, the Rocche Viberti 2015 Barolo Rocche di Castiglione sources its fruit from Castiglione Falletto, a village pretty much at the center of the greater Barolo appellation. The wine is softly layered and rich, showing a thick level of concentration that is a sure characteristic of this growing season. This Barolo is ample and generous in terms of aromas, with dried cherry, plum, light spice, tar and licorice root.
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Decanter
Claudio Viberti runs this small property that produces consistently good wines from vineyards in Castiglione Falletto. Rocche di Castiglione lies on limestone soils, and the vines are around 40 years old. Viberti ages the wines in large casks of French origin. The nose is dumb now, but the palate is lush and weighty, with bold but ripe tannins. Although the acidity seems fairly low, the wine has substance and texture, if no great persistence.
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.