Winemaker Notes
Intense pomegranate colored with ruby hints. Notes of woody fruits, violet and rose. The palate is solid, intense with velvet tannins.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A solid Prapo with medium body and firm and polished tannins that give length and structure. Berry, flower and spice character. Give it time to soften and show its true self.
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Wine Spectator
An aromatic red, with cherry, plum and truffle notes embraced by sweet spices and toasty oak. The tannins build as this evolves on the palate, yet this is balanced, expressive and long overall, with a succulent feel in the end.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
With fruit from Serralunga d'Alba, the Schiavenza 2019 Barolo Prapò is a bulky wine with extra fruit weight and raw oak tones that are a long way from integrated. This wine pushes hard over the palate thanks to a powerful 15% alcohol content that is difficult to coincide with a grape as fragile and elegant as Nebbiolo. Fruit is drawn from a site with tuffaceous soils at 300 meters in elevation. These are two factors that accelerate ripeness.
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.