Barolo tasting, where it’s made

Three Barolo from the same hill

We make three Barolo and they all come from the vineyards around the farmhouse, inside the Bricco San Pietro cru in Monforte d’Alba. Tasting them one after the other is the most direct way to understand what changes when the wood, the time and the slope change.

The Barolo del Comune di Monforte d’Alba is born in the Bricco San Pietro: traditional winemaking in steel with a floating cap for twenty days, then thirty-two months in large Slavonian oak casks and six in bottle.

The Barolo Bricco San Pietro comes from the same cru but ferments in a 25-hectolitre oak vat, with three pump-overs and three punch-downs by hand a day for twenty-five days. Then twenty-eight months in French oak — sixty percent new tonneaux, forty percent second-use barriques — and a year in bottle.

The Riserva we make only in the vintages that deserve it. Same vineyard, same winemaking, but twice the time: thirty-two months in tonneaux and two and a half years in bottle before it leaves the cellar.

Why Barolo tastes like this here

The Bricco San Pietro is the largest named vineyard in all of Barolo, and one of those least talked about. The soil is sandy Sant’Agata Fossili marl, Tortonian, about ten million years old: that pale grey you recognise as you walk on it. The sandy component drains, pushes the roots deep and gives a fine-grained tannin.

Our vineyards sit between 250 and 520 metres, on two different slopes of the cru. These are things better explained on the spot, with the soil under your shoes.

The first generation to bottle it

The family has farmed this hill since 1975, but we have only bottled Barolo since 2008. Before that, the grapes were sold. That’s why the tasting isn’t a rehearsed performance: it’s work still in progress, and you can hear it in the way we tell it.