Barolo: New and Recent Releases, Part 3

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The last installment in our annual three-part series of Barolo’s new and recent releases sees a bunch of the region’s best-known estates featured in it, including Massolino, Oddero, Paolo Scavino, Parusso, Pio Cesare, Trediberri, Vietti and many more. As always, however, I stress that Barolo is the one area in Italy with the highest concentration of talented winemakers. It follows that there are plenty of outstanding bottles for you to choose from even from those producers the names of which are ignored by seemingly professional name-droppers who never miss a tasting, dinner or a chance to talk up their latest buys for the cellar; but you know better, so do not make the mistake of running only after the tried and (more or less) true. Rather, go out of your way to try the wines of less well-known Barolo estates that often are just as good as the famous names, but that certainly cost a good deal less. For example, if you have never tried the wines of Ferdinando Pincipiano, Mauro Molino, Palladino, Rivetto, and Schiavenza, you are really doing yourself a disservice.

The wines in this report were all tasted mostly in Shanghai, where I live or in Italy; a number of wines were tasted by my long-time associate Michele Longo, and his tasting notes are identified by an (ML). Where you find no such thing at the end of the tasting note, then the tasting note and the score is mine. In those rare instances where we tasted different wines from the same estates, I then place either an (ML) or an (ID) at the end of the tasting note of the wines we each tasted, so as to make it perfectly clear as to who actually tasted, wrote about, and scored that specific wine.

Next up, in about one week’s time, the wines of Barbaresco that in recent times is a region that has enjoyed better weather patterns than Barolo (for example, 2011, 2014 and 2018 were all better vintages in Barbaresco than they were in Barolo; by contrast, the latter remains unbeatable in 2013, 2016 and 2019 while the very poor 2017 vintage is pretty well a tie across the board). And so, if you like Nebbiolo wines, you’re in luck… but first, don’t miss out on our World’s Best Buy Wines 2022 list out later this week, on Friday!