La Spinona’s Langhe Nebbiolo is produced with fruit from the Barbaresco crus of Faset and Ronchi. The organically grown grapes are hand-picked, destemmed and then given a short pre-ferment cold soak. Fermentation and one year’s maturation take place in tank in order to preserve freshness of the fruit.
The wine appears ruby red in the glass, and has a clean nose of roses, raspberries and cherries. On the palate there is freshness, with dried cherries and those oh-so important – though approachable – nebbiolo tannins.
La Spinona’s 2019 Langhe Nebbiolo is a gorgeous, old school wine. Sweet pipe tobacco, crushed flowers, mint, spice and dried cherry all grace this deceptively mid-weight Nebbiolo. Sinewy tannins lend structure as well as energy. There is a lot to like, that is pretty clear.
Sandrone’s flagship Barolo is 100% Cannubi Boschis—the Barolo vineyard so synonymous with this grower. The Boschis subzone sits near the northern end oftheCannubi hill,directly acrossfrom theSandrone cellars.The Cru(of which Sandronefarms1.9hectaresof39-year-oldvines),hasaparticularlygoodexposure to the south and southeast, in a small amphitheatre that helps hold warmth in the early morning. Its soils are sea deposits of calcareous clay with some sand and therefore have excellent drainage.
The Cannubi slope is complex, with soil variation, many different aspects and variation in altitude. “It looks like a sleeping dragon,” says Barbara Sandrone, describing the way the ridge snakes across the landscape. Highlighting the uniqueness of the wines from this terroir compared to the rest of the Cannubi hill,.ThewinemakingissimilartothatoftheBaroloLeVigne,althoughhere,the juice spends a longer time on skins (up to two months).
Just when we thought Luciano Sandrone might have been ready to put his feet up and enjoy a much-deserved retirement, he astounded us (and the rest of the wine world) in late 2019, with the release of a new wine that has the potential to redefine his eponymous estate, a wine that may have created a world-firstbygettingtwo100-pointreviewsfromkeycritics(AntonioGalloniandMonica Larner) on its first release (the 2013 vintage).
In 1987, Luciano noticed one vine in his rented plot of Le Coste, Barolo, was behaving in a very surprising manner, producing much smaller bunches and berries and growing leaves with a different morphology. Growers have long associatedsmallerberriesandbuncheswithhigherquality(rememberingalso that Nebbiolo typically has the opposite problem) and so Luciano was very interested in what he had stumbled upon.
Hetookcuttingsandplantedtheminseveraldifferentplacestoseeiftheywould behavethesameway.Theydid,andsoin1991,Lucianoandhisbrother(vineyard manager Luca Sandrone) began planting out cuttings taken from these vines in two Crus: Drucà and Rivassi. Later, Sandrone acquired the original parcel of Le Coste and planted it out with this cultivar—so there are three tiny sites today.
In2017,whenthevineswerefinallyabletobeverifiedbyDNAtesting,itwas discoveredthevineswereindeedNebbiolo,butauniquestrainthathadnever been identified before. The Sandrone family have named it Vite Talin—‘the vine of Talin’ (Talin being the name of the grower who originally owned the vineyard). Today there are 8,000 vines in production, only leading to around 2,000 bottles of wine.
