Brovia Barolo Brea Vigna Ca’ Mia 2017 750ml

The 2017 Barolo Brea Vigna Ca’ Mia sources its fruit from old vines planted in Serralunga d’Alba. This site is known for power and structure, although this hot-vintage expression treads with surprisingly light and delicate footprints. Instead of overt ripeness (like the kind we saw in the two Brovia wines from Castiglione Falletto), the Brea is salty and mineral driven. It shows subdued primary fruit framed by iron ore, rusty nail and dusty terracotta. The jury is out on the wine’s aging potential, as a bit more fruit padding might have served well to carry it forward over the years. To my palate, this release has taken the biggest hit from the challenging vintage and is a bit dried out compared to past editions. 5,000 bottles were produced.

• 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.