Winemaker Notes
The nose of the LV 2015 is still a little closed on opening the wine, indicating this Barolo could still use a few years in bottle. With coaxing and repeated swirling, the aromas of red and black fruits begin to emerge, with notes of sweet spices and subtle notes of wood and underbrush. On the palate, the tannins are still a bit closed, but the fruit structure of the wine is broad and complex, balanced by a bright acidity and a mature, distinct and long tannin.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A super-complex and deep wine with aromas of cinnamon, mint, prunes, leather and tobacco. Full-bodied, it shows incredible tension, density and concentration, with velvety tannins, crisp acidity and umami flavors on a super-long aftertaste. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Luciano Sandrone 2015 Barolo Le Vigne Sibi et Paucis delivers a good sense of freshness and brightness. It offers a very good read of the vintage with an open-knit and broad texture. The tannins still might need an extra year or two to integrate. The wine ages for a standard 18 months in tonneaux, followed by eight additional years in the bottle in a special room built at the back of the winery. Only 1,500 bottles are being released now. I came back to taste this wine 24 hours later and continued to be impressed by its freshness.
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Vinous
The 2015 Barolo Le Vigne Sibi et Paucis is just beginning to open in its aromatics. Mid-weight, gracious and elegant, the 2015 is a classic Le Vigne. Red-toned fruit, blood orange, mint and high-toned spice notes are nicely laced together. This has aged beautifully. In fact, I might be tempted to cellar it for a few more years!
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Wine Spectator
Balsamic flavors of eucalyptus, juniper and bay offset the cherry and raspberry flavors in this powerful red. There’s an underlying mineral element, along with burly tannins. Best from 2027 through 2045.
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.