In addition to the great value everyday bottles and perfectly aged classics we offer on SommSelect, a few times each month we strive to present the most rarified bottles on the planet. These are the real “Unicorns”—wines that have over-achieved across multiple generations and now enjoy an especially exalted status. Roagna is one of the most deservedly legendary estates to have mastered the complex terroirs of Barolo and Barbaresco. With the release of each vintage, the global wine press reliably lavishes praise on the family while the bottles disappear immediately into the cold cellars of the world’s top restaurants. Scarcity aside, the one catch with Roagna is that the wines tend to demand an unusually long rest in the cellar before they open up and reveal their true splendor. Fortunately, this wine has already enjoyed 7+ years of rest— and that furthermore, the warm and generous 2009 vintage blessed it with a uniquely ‘young’ drinking window.

As I’ve written about once each year since we started this site, Roagna is a small family producer located in Castiglione Falletto, Barolo, with holdings in both Barbaresco and Barolo. The winemaker and umpteenth-generation (this family has been making wine in Barbaresco before glass bottles existed!) head of the estate, Luca Roagna, is dedicated to organic farming and to producing extraordinarily age-worthy single-vineyard wines. Alongside Cappellano and Conterno, wine professionals regard Roagna as one of the top three or four truly traditional producers in the region. 

When I was on a vineyard tour in Barbaresco a few years ago, I looked up at the cru named “Paje” and noticed that one vineyard was overgrown. It was as if a verdant forest had sprung up in the middle of an otherwise rigid-looking hillside of vines. I asked whose vineyard it was and, of course, the answer was Roagna. This style of farming—in which tall native grasses, flowers, indigenous wild herbs, and mycorrhizae are encouraged to flourish—is not typical in this region. This vineyard philosophy is indicative of Luca's respect for biodiversity, his desire to produce wine from vineyards that thrive in their natural environment, and his strong conviction that this is how to make the truest and most moving expressions of Barbaresco and Barolo. 

This bottling hails from the Roagna family’s only Nebbiolo-growing site outside of Barbaresco, the timeless Barolo cru of Pira. As with all Roagna properties, there are no herbicides, pesticides, or chemicals allowed on the premises. Pira is a sloping hillside vineyard in the heart of Barolo’s Castiglione Falletto. The Roagna family has worked these vines across three decades, but the vineyard itself has been producing world-class wine since antiquity. Pira is one of the most historically important vineyard sites in the area, as shown by the private road that still connects it to a ruined castle once inhabited by Castiglione Falletto’s noble family. The vineyard is sandwiched between similarly elite vineyard real estate above and undisturbed nature below. A meandering stream and dense forest land beneath the vineyard protect the vineyard from harsh weather while providing an ideal habitat for the various birds, insects, and symbiotic organisms necessary to farm a vineyard as naturally as Roagna wishes. Just uphill from the vineyard, one of Barolo’s other “grand crus,” Rocche di Castiglione, shields the property from the area’s famously punishing winds and hail. Pira’s soil is a blend of limestone, marl, blue stone and shattered rock that slowly trickles down from Rocche above.

We’ve shared before that, in addition to his defiantly natural farming techniques, Luca is as traditional a winemaker as exists in the region. He ferments and macerates the grapes, with the skins on, in large Slavonian oak casks for up to 100 days. This extraordinarily lengthy maceration extracts yet another layer of flavor and tannin, provides more structure, and imparts the wines’ near limitless aging potential. As a result, Roagna Barbaresco and Barolo typically requires considerable time in bottle before opening. Thanks to the vintage’s generously warm temperatures and Luca’s judicious touch in the cellar, this 2009 Barolo Pira is just entering its long plateau of prime drinking. This bottle is hauntingly delicious now but it will grow more complex and mighty for many years to come. 

In the glass, the 2009 Roagna Barolo Pira shows classic dark garnet/crimson tones transitioning to brick and orange on the rim. The aromas and flavors are quite ‘Burgundian’: dried roses, violets, wild mint, porcini mushroom powder, black truffles, and mountain forest aromas adorn a deep core of crushed stone, clay, red berries, preserved plum, and black currant. The finish lasts forever and the longer this wine breathes in your decanter, the more intoxicating and expressive it becomes. If you’re drinking it now, decant it two hours before serving at 65 degrees in large Burgundy bowls. I’ll admit I broke into two consecutive bottles last weekend and the following morning, bottle number two was still stretching into more exotic aromatic territory. This “morning after” technique is a great trick to assess a wine’s cellar potential, and for me, there is no doubt this bottle possesses the stuffing to evolve and improve for at least another 8-9 years. So, I suggest a similarly generous and patience-intensive table companion. Have you ever tried slow roasting an entire veal breast? This recipe offers the secret to perfecting the succulent dish to accompany this epic wine.