2021 Mauro Marengo, Langhe Nebbiolo DOC, Piemonte, Italy.
This is seriously delicious dark ruby/garnet and aromatic Langhe Nebbiolo is from the youthful talents and insightful winemaker Daniele Marengo at Mauro Marengo, who’s wines I just tried recently for the first time, and makes for a Nebbiolo with true varietal character and structure on the palate, while being easy to enjoy even its youthful form. There’s a lot to admire here and this wine delivers what some people would say is a “Baby Barolo” performance in the glass, showing off classic dark berry, red currant, brandied cherry, damson plum and blood orange fruits, along with mineral tones, delicate rose petal and violet florals, minty herbs, savory earthiness, black licorice and chalky notes. This bottling is sourced from various plots high on the plateau inside the località of San Grato and Zora, and at the top of the famous Barolo crus of Ravera and Terlo, with high elevation vines that are set on red clay, calcareous sand and marl, that add to the freshness, depth and tension here. The sense of place is very obvious here and the fine grained tannins make this wine a good companion with some robust cuisine and or rustic country inspired meals, in particular meat and or wild mushroom dishes. This was first experience tasting this label and I was thrilled by what I tried and I do look forward to sampling the Barolo efforts from Mauro Marengo in the future, especially after finding such quality in this Langhe Nebbiolo.
The US importer The Source Imports says the Marengo family’s technical direction was given to Daniele, the latest generation here, at age twenty-two, his personal taste and style of wines led him to pursue freshness over power and ripeness, and to highlight their Novello-based high-altitude vineyards, which you can see here. He also turned their attention to soil health and the incorporation organic farming in their vineyards. The cellar work, as the importer adds is gentler now, and new techniques have been employed, but the traditional style didn’t disappear in the profile, it was just complimented. In recent years, to down play ripeness, Marengo harvests a little earlier, have even considered doing whole cluster and submerged cap fermentation(s) when those traditional methods need a boost. Daniele gently extracts tannin and tries to retain acidity, and ages his varietal wines in a combination of concrete vats and medium-sized oak botte. This Langhe Nebbiolo was fermented naturally with native yeasts in both stainless steel and concrete, with the maceration lasting about 25-27 days with daily pump-overs, after which it saw large cement vat and bigger wood cask for under 6 months before blending to tank. This 100% Nebbiolo wine is impressive, especially for the price, in terms of mouth feel and substance, it offers loads of purity and bang for the buck, and I will be following Mauro Marengo closely and I recommend look for this effort and their tasty Dolcetto as well.
($26 Est.) 92 Points, grapelive