Wine Advisor
Bartolo Mascarello, Barolo 2019
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Monica Larner
Coming to market this fall, the Bartolo Mascarello 2019 Barolo represents a classic vintage in between two challenging growing seasons. Both 2018 and 2020 were hotter than 2019, resulting in higher alcohol levels. With fruit harvested on October 8th and 9th, this expression from 2019 shows extra freshness and a more streamlined style compared to the texturally generous 2020 or the softer and more open-knit 2018. Extraction and structure came easily in 2019, and delicate pump-overs sufficed. Maria Teresa Mascarello opted against submerged cap fermentations in 2022, 2019, 2017 and 2013. It was performed in 2016, 2014 and 2010, however. The fruit represents a blend of Monrobiolo in Bussia (a site with a lease that ends in 2025), Rue and Cannubi in Barolo and Rocche dell’Annunziata in La Morra. San Lorenzo will return to the blend in 2020. This bottle promises a decisive, vertical delivery of fruit (lots of "skeleton and bones") with a pretty moment of crunch, elegant acidic freshness and tannic structure. If you are nostalgic for a tight, acidity-driven Barolo that is good for long cellar aging, the 2019 is for you.
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
The 2019 Barolo is a potent, layered wine, within the super-classic style that is the house signature. Dark cherry, plum, spice, leather, licorice and menthol add to an impression of brooding intensity. There's real weight and substance here that needs time to emerge. Dried herbs, sage, mint, tobacco and cedar linger on the vibrant, tense finish.
About the Producer
Bartolo Mascarello, located in the famous Barolo region of Piedmont, is one of Italy's leading wineries, founded in 1918 and run by the Mascarello family, defenders of the old school style of Barolo, and owned by the legendary Maria Teresa Mascarello. The current owner is Maria Teresa Mascarello, daughter of the legendary master winemaker Bartolo Mascarello. The winery's winemaking philosophy has been passed down from generation to generation and does not follow the trend of making single vineyard wines, insisting on concrete and wooden barrel fermentations without temperature control measures. The wine is aged in 2,500 litres of Slovenian vats for three years and then bottled for one year before being released, producing a wine of great structure and great elegance and refinement. Bartolo Mascarello produces around 30,000 bottles of wine a year, of which the Barolo DOCG is produced in very small quantities (around 1,250 cases a year) and, as the benchmark of traditional Barolo wines, is often priced out of the market and hard to find.
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