Winemaker Notes
The 2020 Aleste Barolo is surprisingly generous at such a young age. The nose is all red fruits and flowers, with notes of earth and minerals. On the palate, the tannins are more pronounced, with copious fruit and fresh acidity.
Blend: 100% Nebbiolo
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Cherry and hibiscus aromas with hints of tar and dried flowers such as roses. Full-bodied and layered, with lots of juicy and rich fruit showing the warmth of the vintage, yet it’s framed with creamy and chewy tannins that give it form and intensity. A very serious and structured 2020.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Luciano Sandrone 2020 Barolo Aleste (with 10,000 bottles released) is layered with sweet earth and drunken cherry. It shows seamless integration and a crescendo of intensity that starts with ripe fruit and dovetails into oak elements, licorice, spice and balanced acidity. This wine is very beautiful in terms of mouthfeel, with length and complexity. Aleste is made with fruit from Cannubi Boschis in the village of Barolo. This is the full monty.
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Vinous
The 2020 Barolo Aleste is a classy, elegant wine that will drink well right out of the gate. Black cherry, plum, mocha, licorice and dark spice resonate beautifully. Soft and succulent, with silky tannins, the 2020 Aleste is a total charmer.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine captivates as aromas of rose petals in oil and Maresca cherries, layered with incense notes lift from the glass. The palate is intense, dark, and rich, offering a mouthfilling experience of dark plums and an abundance of mixed sweet spices countered by dried bay leaf and black tea. The wine finishes with elegant tannins and lifted acidity. Drink Now - 2045.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
This red shows breadth to its cherry, plum, tar, eucalyptus and sweet spice flavors, with an accent of licorice. Walks a tightrope between power and elegance, with a well-integrated structure, refined tannins and a racy, resonant finish. Best from 2028 through 2048.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A deeper brick color, the 2020 Barolo Aleste is also darker and more introspective on the nose, with notes of fresh leather, baked cherries, dark stones, and umami richness in its hint of porcini. It expands on the palate, with ripe, broad tannins, good freshness, a rich texture, and a long finish. Although it’s a riper wine.
Luciano Sandrone is one of the most iconic producers in Barolo, and his is both a well known and extraordinary story. He started to learn viticulture at the age of 14 or 15, and after years of work as a cellarman he depleted his life savings and purchased his first vineyard on the Cannubi hill in 1977, though he could only manage his land on the weekends while he continued to work. He made his first vintage in 1978, in the garage of his parents, and then spent years refining his ideas about how to make a wine of distinction and utmost quality that respected the traditions of Barolo while incorporating new ideas and understanding about viticulture and vinification. He made every vintage until 1999 at home, until the winery he constructed in 1998 was ready for use.
Sandrone's wines are sometimes described as straddling the modern and traditional styles in the region: elegant, attractive and easy to appreciate right from their first years in bottle, but with no less power and structure than traditional Barolos. Along with the extremely low yields in the vineyard and an obsessive attention to training, pruning and harvesting, Sandrone has a very rational approach in the cellar. This approach, however, is also unique and outside of simple classification: Sandrone subjects his wines to medium-length maceration period, shorter than traditional, but makes limited use of new oak in the maturation process, which takes place in 500 liter tonneaux, all signs of a more traditional approach in the cellar. The entire range of wines, all limited in production, are jewels of impeccably balanced concentration and precision, and the ability to age for long periods of time.
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.