Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Wonderful aromas of dried roses, walnuts, mushrooms and ripe fruits. Full body with firm, silky tannins and a tangy finish. This is solid, tight and condensed. Very silky texture. Drink or hold.
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Tasting Panel
From the same parcels as the 2013. Smooth and rich, pure and focused; toasty, long, and juicy with notes of earth and spice. Complex and balanced, with limited availability
Driven by a passion for exceptional Nebbiolo, the Travaglini family has been producing remarkable, limited-production wines from their eponymous estate in Gattinara for four generations. As the foremost producer and largest vineyard owner in this northern region of Piedmont, Travaglini’s distinctive bottle-shaped Gattinara is the most iconic bottle of the appellation.
Gattinara plays an important role in Italian viticulture, but until a couple decades after the turn of the century, this beautiful region of Alto Piemonte was nearly forgotten. A winemaking region older than Barolo, Gattinara covered almost 600 hectares by the end of the 1800’s, making it one of the largest in Northern Europe. The phylloxera plague, coupled with a devastating hail storm in 1905, completely destroyed the region and wine production in Gattinara was abandoned. Fortunately, Clemente Travaglini recognized the potential in this mountainous region and established his winery here in the 1920s. His passion for Nebbiolo helped raise the profile of Gattinara, a commitment that has been carried on through the generations. The family implemented major changes in the winery and vineyards, pioneering research into improved methods of viticulture, such as high density planting (5,000/HA) and 100% hand-harvesting.
The Travaglini family owns 59 hectares of vineyards; 44 of which are dedicated to vines, primarily Nebbiolo. A small portion is planted to native varieties Vespolina and Uva Rara. The family’s vineyard holdings represent almost 59% of total Gattinara DOCG. The small appellation lies in the rocky foothills of the Monte Rosa range, where ventilating winds blow down from the nearby Alps. Soils are rocky and rich in iron, imparting a reddish color on the Earth. Its northern, mountainous location experiences a continental climate, with very cold, snowy winters and warm, sunny summers.
4th generation Cinzia Travaglini now runs the estate, along with her husband Massimo Collauto, chief winemaker. Their efforts, as the generations before them, have made Travaglini one of Italy’s most recognizable wines and the #1 selling Gattinara in the world.
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.