Barbaresco

The 2011 vintage is the first release of the Minuto family’s Barbaresco Asili, from their tiny handkerchief square of vines (0.6 hectares), comprising 55-year-old vines. There is more sand in Asili, contributing a fine texture, along with mentholated, ripe, small, strawberry fruit. It's so pretty, so suave, with impeccable lines, and quasi-perfect balance; a joy, but still in its relative youth. It should age beautifully if you can wait. 

One of the oldest, and finest Barbaresco estates, Cascina Luisin is located close to the village itself, overlooking its prime vineyard of Rabajà. Son Roberto is gradually filling the shoes of his father Luigi Minuto: there has been a renovation of the large oak botti, with Austrian Stockinger oak, along with a new family reserves cellar for all those magnificent old bottles. Alongside the pretty Barbaresco Paolin and more structured Rabajà, this year we are offering the first release of their old-vine Asili.

Bruno Giacosa's cellars are in Nieve and he has just over 17 hectares of vines in Barbaresco and Barolo. The fashionable new French 225-litre barriques are not for Giacosa: all his wine is aged in large 5,000-litre botti, though these are now French rather than Slovenian. His wines are marvellously perfumed on the nose, and meaty and full-bodied on the palate. They have a suppleness and elegance that few wines in the region can match.

The fruit purity that characterises much Nebbiolo in 2011 is evident in this wine, with cranberry, redcurrant and ripe strawberry notes layered with minerals and spice on the nose and palate. There is a fine balance between delicacy and finesse, concentration and structure; resulting in a wine that is both accessible now and serious enough to reward those who can resist temptation and leave it in bottle for a while longer.

Lustrous mid ruby. Quite intense nose of red fruit and oak and perfectly integrated. Still quite closed and backward on the palate with bags of powdery tannins. Powerful structure on the finish. Very long and balanced, yet undeniably oaky for the moment.
Walter Speller - jancisrobinson.com, Oct 2016

Round, supple and succulent, the 2011 Costa Russi is laced with dark red cherry, plum, mocha, cloves and new leather. The classic Costa Russi personality comes through in a soft, gracious wine with tons of near and medium-term appeal. The Costa Russi captures an attractive middle ground between the ripe, pliant style of the year and the medium bodied grace of Nebbiolo. I expect the 2011 will offer a long and broad drinking window of pure pleasure. Although Costa Russi is often the most precocious of Gaja's single-vineyard wines, it is the last site to be picked.
Antonio Galloni, Vinous, October 2014

Just mid ruby with orange tinges. A little more fruit driven than the straight Barbaresco. Cherry and raspberry with a cool edge to it and the merest suggestion of oak. Beautiful, supple, mid-weight palate of red fruit, and complemented with quite demanding tannins, at least for the moment. Precise.
Walter Speller - jancisrobinson.com, Oct 2016

Mid ruby with the beginning of orange tinges. Deep cherry nose with an exotic spice edge. Rusty nail and orange-skin hints. Perfectly integrated oak, but really backward on the palate. Near perfect balance between fruit and acidity, but the tannic load needs to integrate further. I’d wait a couple of years for the dust to settle.
Walter Speller - jancisrobinson.com, Oct 2016

The grapes for Gaja's flagship Barbaresco are sourced from 14 unique vineyard sites across Barbaresco. The wine spends an average of 12 months in barriques followed by 12 months in large wooden casks. A very elegant wine which ages well, it can be appreciated within a few years of bottling.
David Berry Green

It is fascinating to see how site and soil composure can play such a role is determining the fruit character and quality of the final wine. Roagna’s 0.22 hectare plot in Asili sits high up on a well-ventilated, sand and limestone site overlooking the river Tanaro below, which combines to give us a beautifully fine, scented, spicy red fruit nose, all prim and pretty, with prefect poise. Harvested on the 10th October 2009, it’s packed with intricately detailed groseille (red currant) essence fruit and pulsates with exciting energy. Very fine.
David Berry Green

Luca Roagna has captured the pure essence of one of Barbaresco’s aristocratic vineyards. This is the Musigny of Barbaresco, with the 50-plus year old vines producing a wine with an ethereal cherry and raspberry-infused nose. The wine has a powerful grace to it, with a sense of the sweet red fruit mid-palate before layers of black tea, crushed herbs, hints of mint and sandalwood add complexity. A star and a wine that will drink for 20 or 30 years should you choose.
Matthew Tipping - Private Account Manager

Almost always the most powerful and austere of Gaja’s five single vineyard wines, it requires a longer time to fully develop. Highly concentrated fruit in addition to fine herbs, minerals and exotic spices. A very focussed, concentrated wine with a long, lingering finish and refined tannins, it has excellent ageing potential.

“Notes of honey, marzipan and kirsch; lots of rose-water, some Turkish Delight and orange blossom on the nose. The palate reveals graceful soft fruit, quite new-world in style, leading to a modern-Langhe style finish. Firm, but fine tannins on the finish, where the oak takes a back-seat to the fruit”
Gary Owen – BBR Fine Wine

 Luca Roagna only started vinifying this tiny wedge of a 50 yo vineyard separately in 2004. The last to be picked, it undergoes a 50 day maceration in oak to produce, even in the shy 2005 vintage, a wine of great profundity, with a sweet core of fruit and elegance.
(David Berry Green)

There is no mistaking the charmingly gentle, broad fleshy appeal of his Pajé wine from the two hectare single vineyard below his home in Barbaresco. It is so pure and delicate, with beautifully ripe tannins, pretty red fruit and a modest 13.5% alcohol. This is very much the family’s signature Barbaresco that can be appreciated relatively young, especially in this charming vintage.
(David Berry Green)

Vintage 1998 was as focused & bright as elsewhere in northern Europe; very different from the sun-baked 1997s & fuller bodied, structured 1999s.

Tasted in July 2013 at the cantina prior to buying, the 1998 Pajé Riserva proved such a pretty wine, with delicate, bright lines; the epitome of fine Barbaresco, fine-boned and slender. No doubt on account of the vintage the wine retains a cool, fresh-face, tight lines and with plenty of liveliness; it remains amazingly young and present. Delicious now, drinking from 2013 to 2020.
David Berry Green 

Displaying a dainty, cranberry and rose petal expression that is created by a great ripeness of fruit, this wine is alive and agile in the mouth. Held together by a delicate tea-leaf backdrop, its skeletal structure is mightily impressive.
David Berry Green, Fine Wine Buyer, August 2011

The ground was hotter in 2010, built up over the long season (as compared to the freshness of 2011), combining to give richer, more balsam notes. A longer, 35-day maceration, without the use of pressed juice, gave a sumptuously suave, free-flowing Barbaresco from the highest, Campo Quadro part of the San Cristoforo vineyard in Neive. There is a distinct distilled tea-tree, rosehip, clove and black-tea core to this gorgeous wine. It's got beautiful lines, very svelte with mocha or coffee bean, along with redcurrant skins.

Destined to be an engineer thanks to a family construction business, Marina rebelled and headed to the vineyards on the family’s 17-hectare estate overlooking Neive, following in the footsteps of her grandmother. Trained in viticulture, she turned the property organic in 1982 (certified in 1993). All the vineyards are grassed over, with the fruit being vinified traditionally in both cement and stainless steel, before being aged in a combination of used French tonneaux and Slavonian botti. She has three Barbaresco vineyards: Basarin, San Cristoforo and San Cristoforo Campo Quadro.

This is made with 55-year-old vine fruit from an exquisite site, right in the heart of a natural amphitheatre close to the village of Barbaresco itself, the soil rich in chalk. Blood-red colour, the nose seduces, as always, with gorgeous, sweet raspberry, kirsch cassis, a hedonistic, velvety texture – held tight with sinewy structure. The palate swells with sumptuous fruit, yet it is chalky and pure, sensational, with such detail – brimming with superlatives.

The father and son team of Alfredo and Luca Roagna are celebrating the completion of their new cantina in Castiglione Falletto, in the heart of La Pira vineyard, a prime location they’ve owned since 1989, but had bought fruit from since the 1950s. Both in their Barolo and Barbaresco estates (15 hectares in total), they pride themselves on their organic, grassed-over vineyards. They’re fortunate to have a wealth of oldvine fruit at their disposal which, of course, they vinify traditionally with extended maceration in large oak barrels.

The estate's most prized wine comes from a perfectly situated 0.52-hectare corner of the Pajé vineyard in the village of Barbaresco, whose old-vine fruit somehow conjures a wine of unbelievable beauty – especially with the superlative 2006 vintage behind it. In a word, sensational; this has cool raspberry and mulberry, the fruit's natural expression undimmed by eight years’ élévage. It seems to possess the same profound, deeprooted complexity enjoyed by the likes of Monfortino; yet it's more porcelain, more delicate and ethereal given its Barbaresco (and Roagna) DNA. Rose-water pure, with such harmony and purity, this is ‘drop-dead' gorgeous.

The father and son team of Alfredo and Luca Roagna are celebrating the completion of their new cantina in Castiglione Falletto, in the heart of La Pira vineyard, a prime location they’ve owned since 1989, but had bought fruit from since the 1950s. Both in their Barolo and Barbaresco estates (15 hectares in total), they pride themselves on their organic, grassed-over vineyards. They’re fortunate to have a wealth of oldvine fruit at their disposal which, of course, they vinify traditionally with extended maceration in large oak barrels.

From the heavy marne soils overlooking the Tanaro river below, Rabajà is one of Barbaresco's top vineyards, a Grand Cru in all but name. The Minuto family have a couple of parcels, both facing south-west, so catching the afternoon warmth. Thank goodness then in 2011 for the refreshing, air-conditioning breezes that spiralled up from the river, fanning the fruit. Bottled in August 2014, from vines with an average 35 years in age, the colour alone conjures up rich, red sunsets. A bigger presence than the more delicate Asili, Rabajà is emphatic, still brooding in youth but promising much in the years to come. Cool feet, swollen summer fruit, it's a wine with more structure, so should age well.

One of the oldest, and finest Barbaresco estates, Cascina Luisin is located close to the village itself, overlooking its prime vineyard of Rabajà. Son Roberto is gradually filling the shoes of his father Luigi Minuto: there has been a renovation of the large oak botti, with Austrian Stockinger oak, along with a new family reserves cellar for all those magnificent old bottles. Alongside the pretty Barbaresco Paolin and more structured Rabajà, this year we are offering the first release of their old-vine Asili.

At only 1.83 hectares, the Roagna family's plot of Pajé still represents nearly 50 percent of the entire surface of this fine Barbaresco vineyard. Close to the Tanaro river flowing by, refreshing the vines with cooling air currents, the chalky character of Pajé’s soil is expressed through its soft, red colour, a dreamy nose of peachy, red fruit, of charmingly pure, effortless, firm but fine fruit tannins, and an enchanting scent throughout.

The father and son team of Alfredo and Luca Roagna are celebrating the completion of their new cantina in Castiglione Falletto, in the heart of La Pira vineyard, a prime location they’ve owned since 1989, but had bought fruit from since the 1950s. Both in their Barolo and Barbaresco estates (15 hectares in total), they pride themselves on their organic, grassed-over vineyards. They’re fortunate to have a wealth of oldvine fruit at their disposal which, of course, they vinify traditionally with extended maceration in large oak barrels.

Only about 1,500 bottles were made from Roagna's south-west-facing plot that adjoins that of Bruno Giacosa. The sandy talc element of the calcareous soil gives an intriguing clementine-skin character, along with rose-petal purity. Crunchy-cool poise, packed with harmonious detail, a glint of kirsch cassis and red cherry-stone, impeccably dressed; it sets the pulse racing.

The father and son team of Alfredo and Luca Roagna are celebrating the completion of their new cantina in Castiglione Falletto, in the heart of La Pira vineyard, a prime location they’ve owned since 1989, but had bought fruit from since the 1950s. Both in their Barolo and Barbaresco estates (15 hectares in total), they pride themselves on their organic, grassed-over vineyards. They’re fortunate to have a wealth of oldvine fruit at their disposal which, of course, they vinify traditionally with extended maceration in large oak barrels.

Also produced in tiny quantities, as all Roagna old-vine wines naturally are, the Pajé version remains true to the bright, cherry-red intensity of the denominazione (versus the paler colour for Barolo): it's open-hearted, engaging with joyful tea-leaf freshness, fabulous tension, fleet of foot, with ballerina poise and balance – a pearl of sweet red cassis.

The father and son team of Alfredo and Luca Roagna are celebrating the completion of their new cantina in Castiglione Falletto, in the heart of La Pira vineyard, a prime location they’ve owned since 1989, but had bought fruit from since the 1950s. Both in their Barolo and Barbaresco estates (15 hectares in total), they pride themselves on their organic, grassed-over vineyards. They’re fortunate to have a wealth of oldvine fruit at their disposal which, of course, they vinify traditionally with extended maceration in large oak barrels.

A real triumph: this has elegant, cool, red fruit with notes of mint and coffee on the nose. It is sumptuous and mouth-filling, yet still retaining amazing elegance and coolness. Terrifically complex with notes of red summer fruits, grilled meats, smoke, chocolate and herbs among many others. The finish is long and fine.