2021 Massolino Langhe Nebbiolo
WINEMAKER: Franco & Roberto Massolino and Giovanni Angeli
REGION: Piedmont, IT
VARIETY: Nebbiolo
VITICULTURE: Organic
This wine just gets better and better. Early vintages of the Nebbiolo were sourced exclusively from Massolino’s younger vines in Serralunga—a declassified Barolo, if you like. Today there are two more parcels in play: Monforte’s Cascina I Maschi (Massolino credits this cool, chalky site with giving the wine lifted perfume and freshness); then there’s a parcel in Alba on lighter, sandy-clay soils, which brings depth of fruit. The blend is roughly one-third from each terroir, and there’s little doubt the sum of these three sites has bought even more finesse and early-drinking appeal to what was already an outstanding Langhe Nebbiolo. The 2021 is a gorgeous wine. Ripe yet pure-fruited (mulberry, red cherry, anise) with fine, chalky tannins and a terrific, perfumed finish. Following very gentle extraction, it was aged in large Slavonian oak casks (like all Massolino Nebbiolo) for 15 months, as opposed to 24-plus months for the Barolo wines. To call this a bargain is to undersell what’s on offer!
The high-altitude chalky hillsides of Serrralunga d’Alba, on the eastern edge of the Barolo DOCG, produce some of the most profound and long-lived Barolo wines. It is the home of great names such as Giacomo Conterno and Bruno Giacosa’s Falletto vineyard. The wines often have an extra stuffing of intense Nebbiolo fruit as well as a remarkable minerality that plays on both the freshness of the tannins and gives the wines a certain ferrous edge when young. Massolino’s Barolos sit comfortably among the finest of the region—they are wines of wonderful purity and elegance. The wines have earned an immaculate reputation in Australia, and deservedly so.