Barolo - Diego & Damiano Barale

The Barolo DOCG by Diego e Damiano Barale is the natural crowning achievement of a consistent and territory-respectful artisan range — the same range that begins with the Barbera d'Alba Superiore at €20, rises to the Langhe Nebbiolo at €21 and arrives here, at the summit, with the great Nebbiolo from Barolo DOCG. Three wines, three levels of growing depth, one family, one territory — the Piedmontese Langhe in its most authentic and most ambitious expression.

Barolo is the king of Italian wines — perhaps the greatest red that Italy produces, the one the world knows as "the wine of kings and the king of wines", produced exclusively from Nebbiolo in eleven municipalities of the Langhe around Alba, with one of Italy's most rigorous production regulations and a capacity for longevity and evolutionary complexity that few other wines in the world can claim. It is not a wine of easy access — it demands patience, time and the right occasion. But when it opens in the right conditions, at full maturity, it is an experience that is never forgotten.

Diego e Damiano Barale produce their Barolo with a modern but tradition-respectful stylistic approach — the same approach that defines the Barbera and Langhe Nebbiolo of the range: French oak tonneaux instead of the large Slavonian barrels of extreme traditionalism, but with an ageing duration — 24 months — that guarantees complete integration without ceding the primacy of fruit and terroir to the wood. The 3,000 bottles produced place this Barolo in the tier of quality artisan production — few bottles, maximum attention.

The 2020 vintage is unanimously considered one of the greatest of recent decades in Barolo — a warm summer with exceptional nocturnal temperature swings that preserved the natural acidity of Nebbiolo producing grapes of extraordinary phenolic concentration, with ripe and already partially integrated tannins and a balance between power and freshness that is rarely achieved. A vintage to cellar and to wait for — but already today, with adequate decanting, capable of delivering extraordinary emotion.

On the nose it is the great Langhe Nebbiolo in its most complete form: dried rose and violet, preserved cherry and morello, raspberry, rhubarb, pipe tobacco, fine leather, tar, oriental spice and a deep and precise calcareous minerality that speaks directly of the Langhe soils. On the palate it is monumental and vertical — massive tannins already well-polished by the 24 months in French tonneaux, a vibrant and razor-sharp natural acidity that is Nebbiolo's genetic signature and that guarantees longevity of at least 15 to 20 years from the harvest, a harmonious glyceric sweetness that balances the alcoholic power and an exceptionally long finish that evolves for minutes in successive waves of fruit, spice, tobacco and minerality. Serve at 18-20°C with mandatory decanting of at least 2 hours. Expresses its best between 5 and 20 years from the harvest.