Cascina Roccalini, Barbaresco 2018

Cascina Roccalini Barbaresco Roccalini has red and purple flowers in the nose, kissed with cinnamon and nutmeg, leading you into a smouldering embrace of red currant, black raspberry, baking spice, sweet basil, white pepper, Tabasco-infused, chocolates and black cherries. There are violets and minerals in there as well and the ensemble is rich, yet elegant with a very long finish.

Young and humble Paolo Veglio tends the vines at his micro-estate in Barbaresco.  Paolo’s family has owned the estate since 1920, but he is the first of the family to be a winemaker and bottle his own wines. Before this, his family was selling the grapes of the estate to his neighbour Giacosa from 1990-2005.

His approach to winemaking is to start in the vineyard and produce healthy grapes. He loves to be on his tractor and tend the land.

He only works organically and takes care of many things by hand. The resulting wines are rich in flavour, complex in the terroir of the land, joyful and balanced Fermented in stainless steel the Roccalini Barbaresco spends 12 months in Slovenian grandi botti.

Nebbiolo is the grape variety behind the top-quality red wines of Piedmont, northwestern Italy, the most notable of which are Barolo and Barbaresco.

Nebbiolo wines are distinguished by their strong tannins, high acidity and distinctive scent – often described as “tar and roses”.

A less obvious characteristic, visible only over time, is their tendency to lose colour. Within just a few years of vintage, most Nebbiolo wines begin fading from deep, violet-tinged ruby to a beautiful brick orange.

Powerful, intense Barolo is the most famous and prestigious Nebbiolo-based wine, but other parts of Piedmont can produce great examples like this wine. piemontemio.com