Today’s electrifying red answers the question, What if a top Barolo estate combined the power and elegance of four separate Grand Cru-equivalent vineyards—“Villero,” “Rocche,” “Brea,” and “Bricco Fiasco”—plus one of the region’s best and most balanced modern vintages, and channeled it all into one show-stopping wine?
The answer is today’s 2013 Barolo from Brovia, which appears poised to be a modern epic—already displaying hauntingly dark fruit, deep minerality, and luxuriously fine-grained tannins. Barolo’s Brovia family is one of the region’s most widely praised superstars. Vintage releases are met with perennially gushing critical praise and feverish demand from collectors and high-end restaurants. Especially in 2013, a vintage whose wines Jancis Robinson, MW calls “equivalent in quality to the already legendary 2010s,” this elite wine is not to be missed; it is just the second 2013 Barolo we’ve offered thus far on SommSelect, but I can assure you there will be many more to come. This is a long-term keeper that’s also sneakily delicious right now!
The Brovia family has been continuously producing Barolo for more than 150 years. The family’s pride is a small collection of top vineyard sites, most of them in the village of Castiglione Falletto: perhaps the best-known is “Villero,” a southwest-facing cru known for powerful, brooding wines, but there’s also the well-known “Rocche” and “Garblèt Sué” (a.k.a. “Bricco Fiasco”) sites. In the village of Serralunga, the Brovias farm a piece of the “Brea” vineyard, and the family bottles their four individual crus separately and releases them as the estate’s premium-priced, top wines. But what many collectors don’t realize is that their basic normale cuvée, today’s offer, is actually a blend of all the top vineyards in one bottle. As we’ve quipped before, there is nothing “normal” about this brilliant wine.
All of Brovia’s vines are meticulously farmed in accordance with organic method, and grapes are harvested by hand. Grape must is fermented in cement vats with regular pump-overs before being racked to casks. Just like the estate’s single-vineyard bottlings, this wine is aged in Slavonian oak barrels for a year, followed by another year in French oak barrels. It’s actually bottled significantly later than the family’s single crus! Finally, the wines rest in bottle for 2 years before release.
Brovia’s 2013 Barolo erupts from the glass with black plum, black cherry, red currant, wet rose blossoms, sweet red tobacco, toasted black truffles and white pepper. Its refined fruit and cascading tannins are seemingly designed to access every corner of one’s palate. 2013 is widely regarded as a particularly special year in Barolo, and this wine demonstrates how the vintage creates Barolo that is both rich and thirst-quenching. Truly impressive stuff, and showing extremely well despite its youth, so there is no need to decant for more than 45 minutes or an hour. Serve in large Burgundy stems at 60 degrees. This wine delivers all the fireworks and complexity one could ever ask for so don’t overdo it with a companion dish. I recommend the rustic classic veal saltimbocca. Finally, it’s worth reiterating that 2013 is a vintage we’ll be discussing for years to come. So, please enjoy a bottle or two today, but rest assured this wine will only improve for at least another decade. I recently opened a 10-year-old Brovia from the similarly low-yielding, warm-autumn 2007 vintage. It was just starting to unleash secondary aromas and mature character. Brovia makes wines for the cellar and this bottle won’t disappoint. Cheers!
