When you taste a wine like this one, it’s like a city’s worth of lights coming back on after a blackout: Every sensory receptor is engaged and illuminated. If that seems a little melodramatic to you, I suggest you drink more Barolo.
Today we have one at the right price, from a great vintage, for doing just that—a full-body wine experience that captures the many dimensions of the Nebbiolo grape. In recent weeks, as all of us have been self-quarantining, I’ve seen countless Instagram posts from people pulling the corks on “special occasion” (i.e. expensive and/or rare) bottles from their cellars—because, why not, right? Among the many appealing features of today’s timeless classic from Oddero is that it vastly exceeds expectations rather than struggles to meet them. This 2015 leaves no doubt whatsoever that Barolo is one of the world’s greatest, most age-worthy reds, even if the international wine market has yet to price it properly. As someone who’s been buying Barolo for 20 years, some of the prices I’m seeing these days give me a shock—and even still, most of the greatest examples cost fractions of what you’d pay for a wine of comparable quality from Burgundy or Napa. At the risk of going off on a rant here, let me just say: A better ‘fine wine’ value does not exist!
Another exciting feature of today’s wine is that it comes from a relatively “new” label, established by one of Barolo’s oldest families—the Odderos. This is one of the founding families of Barolo wine and one of the first to bottle under their own label. Up until 2006, brothers Luigi and Giacomo Oddero co-owned the estate founded by their grandfather, Giacomo, in the late-1800s. When the brothers and their respective families decided to go their separate ways, they divvied up one of the most enviable (and extensive) collections of prime vineyard sites in Barolo, which included parcels all over the appellation—not just in the family’s home base in La Morra. While Giacomo (the younger) and his family retained the original winery in La Morra—and whose wines are now labeled as “Oddero Poderi e Cantine”—Luigi and family acquired the historic Luigi Parà winery, about a kilometer away. Following Luigi’s passing in 2010, his wife, Lena, and children (figli), Maria and Giovanni, took over management of the estate.
Overall, the Luigi Oddero family farms an impressive 35 hectares of vineyards throughout Barolo, with winemaking assistance coming from one of the most respected cellar men in the business: Dante Scaglione, the longtime right-hand-man to Barolo/Barbaresco legend Bruno Giacosa. Scaglione, now a legend in his own right, has been gradually passing the torch to a young rising star named Francesco Versio, a Barbaresco native who worked with him toward the end of his tenure at Giacosa.
Today’s wine is from the 2015 vintage, which has so far lived up to all the hype it received from the critics. This was, as many of our readers know, a very hot year across Europe and one that produced very rich, somewhat atypical wines in some places. In Barolo, meanwhile, it didn’t make the wines bigger but it fact a little gentler (in terms of their tannic impact) and purer in their fruit expression. The powerful structure of Nebbiolo is on full display, but whereas some young vintages of Barolo can be austere, and a little clipped, most of the ’15s we’re tasting are already generously perfumed, nicely textured on the palate, and extremely persistent on the finish.
The Figli Luigi Oddero ’15 is a classic example of a Barolo basse—the “base,” or flagship bottling of the house, reflecting the diversity of the family’s vineyard holdings throughout the zone—in this case, sites in the villages of La Morra (where the winery is headquartered), Castiglione Falletto, and Serralunga d’Alba. The wine was aged 24 months in large oak botti (vats) of 65- and 85-hectoliter capacity, followed by a year in bottle before release, and while it is still “young” by Barolo standards, it has a tremendous amount to offer already. In the glass, it’s a medium garnet-red moving to pink and orange at the rim, with a beautifully perfumed nose of dried red and black cherry, red currant, blood orange, licorice, sandalwood, tobacco, rose petals, underbrush, and so much more. It is a densely concentrated, very compact wine right now, with very fine-grained tannins—harmonious and beautifully constructed, but in need of a good hour in a decanter if you choose to enjoy a bottle soon. This is such a pitch-perfect evocation of “classic” Barolo I’m not inclined to get cute with the pairing. Stick with braised beef in red wine (brasato al Barolo), fresh pastas with wild mushrooms, or, if you find yourself with enough time on your hands, some homemade agnolotti dal plin. Talk about a special occasion! Enjoy!
