Giacomo Conterno Barolo Cerretta 2015 750ml

After our tasting of the two Barbera wines, we moved over to 40-hectoliter cask number 101 to get our first taste of Conterno’s finished (or nearly finished, as the wine had not been bottled yet) Nebbiolo. The 2015 Barolo Cerretta is influenced by the warm conditions of the vintage with plenty of ripe and succulent fruit, although this vintage differs from the similarly warm 2017 and 2011 harvests in that the 2015 growing season had more moisture locked within the soil. Consequently, this vintage tends to offer cool-climate tannins and structure, giving the wine the ample backbone it needs to carry all those luscious dark nuances. The wine is ripe, profound and makes your mouth salivate.

• Country: Italy
• Region: Piedmont
• Appellation: Barolo
• Size: 750ml
• Color: Red

Varietal

Nebbiolo

The Nebbiolo grape varietal is widely understood to be the fruit responsible for Italy’s finest aged wines. However, its popularity and reliability as a grape which gives out outstanding flavors and aromas has led it to be planted in many countries around the world, with much success. These purple grapes are distinguishable by the fact that they take on a milky dust as they begin to reach maturity, leading many to claim that this is the reason for their unusual name, which means ‘fog’ in Italian. Nebbiolo grapes produce wines which have a wide range of beautiful and fascinating flavors, the most common of which are rich, dark and complex, such as violet, truffle, tobacco and prunes. They are generally aged for many years to balance out their characteristics, as their natural tannin levels tend to be very high.