Winemaker Notes
Intense garnet-red color. The nose, while stark to begin with, reveals complex floral notes that emerge after a few minutes in the glass. Striking notes include red fruit, chalk and white pepper. It is fine on the palate, with hints of ripe red berries. The taught, compact tannins make this a very classic wine. The acidity is vibrant and vertical. Very elegant and refined. We recommend decanting a few hours before serving.
Pair with game, red meat, and mature cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Barolo Ravera is a wine of impact and power, and it is also a wine of the future. That's because Ravera (in the village of Novello) is one of the break-out sites that continues to awe and surprise despite a changing climate. Indeed, its high elevation and open panorama toward snow-capped mountains keeps the microclimate ventilated but also protected. Luca Currado affirms that Ravera is what Cannubi was just a few years ago. Wines from Novello also show an extraordinary but very unique evolution in which the tannic impact of the wine remains firm. This vintage shows deep intensity and good freshness. It fully covers the palate from front to back.
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Wine Spectator
A dark, brooding style, this red evokes hibiscus, raspberry, cherry and spice flavors, with an underlying iron note. It's dense, yet focused and vibrant, with ample fruit to stand up to its muscular structure. Balanced and expressive now, yet this needs time.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Barolo Ravera is supple with aromas of licorice, raspberry liqueur, blood orange. It is medium to full-bodied, offering more citrus ripeness throughout, as well as notes of tea leaf and grenadine, fine tannins, and fresh acidity, without feeling austere. This is an adjacent property to Cogno’s prized section of Ravera Pernice.
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Wine & Spirits
This wine’s robust red cherry and berry flavors surge through taut, ferrous tannins, maintaining a cool elegance as the wine fleshes out with exposure to air. Girded by a tarry undertone, the flavors are impressively precise, the tannins finely chiseled, the aromas exuberant and fresh.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of macerated raspberries, roasted plums and candied cherries all combine with wild thyme, star anise and aged tea on this cru Barolo. Firm and well-structured with plum, dried leaves and a very earthy finish that pops on with a crisp acidity.
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James Suckling
A rich, spicy Barolo with red and dark berry character and notes of licorice, walnuts and chocolate. Medium- to full-bodied with firm, ripe tannins. Bright and juicy on the palate, with hints of dried orange peel at the end.
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Decanter
The oldest part of this vineyard was planted in 1935 but the average age is 34 years. It's located at 400 metres – Ravera is one of the highest MGAs within the communes of Barolo and Novello, which it straddles. This 2019 is intensely perfumed, with dried fruits soaked in blood orange, strawberry jam and a suggestion of grace. The attack confirms this lightly extracted style, with ripe tannins, still sticky at the moment, and long, refreshing acidity leading to a good finish.
Located in the heart of the Langhe hills, at the top of the village of Castiglione Falletto, the Vietti wine cellar was founded in the late 1800's by Carlo Vietti. The estate has gradually grown over the course of time, and today the vineyards include some of the most highly prized terroirs within the Barolo and Barbaresco winegrowing areaS.
Although they have been making wine for four generations, the turning point came in the 1960's when Luciana Vietti married winemaker and art connoisseur Alfredo Currado, whose intuitions - from the production of one of the first Barolo crus (Rocche di Castiglione - 1961), through the single-varietal vinification of Arneis (1967) to the invention of Artist Labels (1974) - made him both symbol and architect of some of the most significant revolutions of the time.
Alfredo’s intellectual, professional, and prospective legacy was taken up by Luca Currado Vietti (Luciana and Alfredo’s son) and his wife Elena, who contributed greatly to the success of the Vietti brand before their departure in 2023. In 2016 the historic winery was acquired by Krause family. Over the last seven year, they have added a number of prized crus to the estate’s holdings. In 2022 the winery was named Winery of the Year by Antonio Galloni of Vinous.
Vietti is universally recognized today as being one of the very finest Italian wine labels - by continuing along the path of the pursuit of quality, considered experimentation and working for expansion and consolidation internationally.
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.