2020 Agricola Brandini, Barolo DOCG, Del Comune di La Morra, Piemonte, Italy.
The beautifully elegant and authentic 2020 Brandini La Morra Barolo shows natural Nebbiolo purity, something that seems to a highlight of winemakers Giovanna and Serena Bagnasco’s wines, with a delicate ruby/brick hue and subtle floral aromas, this Barolo drinks like a fine Burgundy, though with a nice rustic charm and medium/full bodied layers of black cherry, damson plum, bramble berry and blood orange fruit, along with amaro herbs, briar spice, chalky stone, tarry licorice, loamy earth and cedar notes. The structure and underlying grip are well integrated, velvety in tannin, but still present enough to tell you clearly what you are drinking and this carries the finish a long way, this is excellent and rewarding stuff. The Bagnascos estate-owned vineyards that Agricole Brandini la Morra farm are all in the Barolo DOCG area and cover an area of just about 20 hectares now, in mainly in the municipality of La Morra and set on sandy calcareous clay based soils and up in elevation, preserving acidity and terroir impact here. These four La Morra parcels with vines the are all in the 15 year old range face south, southwest and southeast and are fermented separately with native yeasts then all joined during maceration seeing daily punch-downs and pour overs with a submerged cap lasting over two weeks. The wine then is matured in used large Slavonian oak Botti for close to 24 months before bottling and resting further in the cellar. I highly recommend getting to know this producer, which is imported to the States by The Source, there is top quality throughout the lineup, though I would certainly focus on the Barolo offerings!
The Agricola Brandini La Morra Estate, as I noted when I first tried their in 2022, owned by Piero Bagnasco and run by his daughters, Giovanna and Serena, was a new producer for me then and in fact they are a pretty recent venture, starting back in 2007, they have a tiny collection of prime Barolo vines and I found the wines to be beautifully made and very exciting. It was nice to meet Giovanna at the Slow Wine tasting event in San Francisco and learn about her wines, especially her cru Annunziata Barolo, which made my top ten Nebbiolos list of the 2017 vintage, and of which I really admired for it’s elegance and exceptional length.The sisters took over completely in 2015 and Agricola Brandini La Morra, who uses the phrase “Organic Human Barolo” to describe its wines, as all of their vineyards, under their control, are now certified organic, hand tended and their wines are traditionally hand crafted, with their Barolo being aged in large, used oak casks with minimal intervention and only minimal amounts of added sulfur at bottling. The grapes come from mostly high elevation parcels, 450 meters up in some sites, which is amongst the highest-altitude vines in the Barolo zone all set on the classic clay and limestone marl soils, which all contribute to the wines quality, elegance, balance and distinctive character, as seen here. Bradini, as I’ve noted before, does a number of other tasty wines from Barbera, Arneis, Dolcetto and Moscato, including a series of Champagne style Alta Langhe sparkling wines that I look forward to trying in the future. I was deeply impressed with Brandini’s 2017s, and now this 2020, everything I’ve tried has been inviting and very enchanting indeed, making especially for seriously seductive Barolos!
($66 Est.) 94 Points, grapelive