For those of you just joining us, let’s start with the basics: ‘Barolo’ is a place name. It is a village, in the Italian region of Piedmont, which lends its name to the wine-producing zone in and around it. The grape variety used to make Barolo wine is Nebbiolo, an aromatic red cultivar which produces wines of great longevity—with high acid, tannin, and alcohol. Barolo reds are some of the most perfumed, terroir-expressive, complex reds on the planet, and we offer them here often, because they are eminently ‘collectible’ reds that can still be acquired at reasonable prices.
This wine from Brezza, which is made in the heart of Barolo’s namesake village, is our latest dalliance in an ongoing love affair with Nebbiolo. It’s a wine that’s both intellectual and seductive, it’ll age for a decade or more, and it’s made by a family with more than a century of winemaking history in Barolo. Do we need to go on?
Okay, yes, let’s go on. While there isn’t a single village in the Barolo region that isn’t magical—each one popping up out of a roiling sea of vineyards—there’s something extra-special about entering the town of Barolo proper. It’s like boarding the mothership; you pass through what is likely the first “cru” vineyard ever designated in the zone (“Cannubi”), all the while glimpsing signposts bearing historic names like Rinaldi, Mascarello, and Borgogno. To an Italian wine geek, this is Mecca, and there may be no better place for a full immersion in Barolo culture than Brezza, which is home not just to the family winery but a hotel and restaurant as well.
The Brezza family has been estate-bottling Barolo wines from Cannubi and a host of other vineyard sites since 1910. Fourth-generation winemaker Enzo Brezza now oversees the estate, with counsel and color commentary provided by his gloriously mustachioed father, Oreste. Their 18 hectares of vineyards, farmed organically, are mostly in the commune of Barolo, and their winemaking style is resolutely traditional: fermentations are begun spontaneously with native yeasts, and the wines are aged only in large-capacity Slavonian oak casks before being bottled unfined and unfiltered.
As we’ve noted before, the Barolo region—once one of the more vintage-sensitive terroirs around, with wet autumns and a ‘continental’ climate—has been on something of a hot streak lately. The 2012 vintage was a good one, if not a landmark, and generally produced more refined styles that are quite accessible in their youth. Regardless of vintage, however, Brezza’s style is very much a “Barolo di Barolo”: a prettier, less ferociously tannic take on the Nebbiolo grape that characterizes wines of both the Barolo village and neighboring La Morra (where there’s slightly more clay in the soils and a more southeasterly, “morning” aspect to the vineyards, lending the wines a little more forward fruit).
This 2012 is Brezza’s “base” Barolo, meaning it is not a single-vineyard wine but a blend of grapes from a variety of sites. While the majority of Brezza’s holdings are in Barolo (including pieces of the Cannubi, Sarmassa, and Castellero crus), this wine also incorporates some fruit from estate vineyards in Monforte and Novello. And it is the epitome of classically styled Barolo, completely transparent and unadorned: In the glass it displays the classic crimson-red Nebbiolo cast with some orange reflections at the rim, and with a few swirls it unleashes an aromatic torrent of dried cherry, red currant, blood orange, leather, tar, tobacco, and dried flowers. Like all Barolo, it has a heady, vapor-like quality, but the alcohol heat (even lighter styles of Barolo climb to 14.5%) is kept in check by bright acidity. On the palate it is medium-plus in body, its tannins gripping but not forbidding; the overall effect is rather gentle, savory, and ‘Burgundian.’ As young Barolos go, it is tantalizingly accessible now; decant it about an hour (or two) before serving in large Burgundy stems at around 65 degrees. It should age nicely for 5-10 years, but there are more structured recent vintages of Barolo to lay down (2008; 2010). Let this savory beauty rip right now—the ultimate pairing would be with classic Piedmontese agnolotti (tiny meat-filled pasta knots) with a simple sauce of
sugo d’arrosto (braised meat drippings), but that would be an extremely ambitious home project. Maybe just do the
sugo part over some fresh (or store-bought) fettucine. And let us know what time we should come over!
