1957 | Giuseppe Mascarello | Barolo

Detailed Description

Complex aromatics of Indian spice, roasted meats, teak, leather and decaying rose. It is full and voluminous, with awesome presence. Structural elements melt into the wine and the finish is supremely long.

Producer Information

Mascarello Giuseppe e Figlio is a prestigious Barolo producer in Piemonte, northwest Italy. The company has been closely associated with the Monprivato vineyard, one of the so-called Barolo crus, since the 1920s, and the single vineyard Monprivato Barolo has become Giuseppe Mascarello’s flagship wine. Giuseppe Mascarello himself tended vineyards in the Langhe in the 19th Century before buying his own site in 1881, and this date is often appended to the producer’s name. In 1904, his son purchased a part of the Monprivato vineyard and began to make wines there. Fourth-generation Mauro Mascarello took over the running of the estate in 1967, and began making a single-vineyard Monprivato wine in 1970. The famous six-hectare (15-acre) cru became a monopole of Giuseppe Mascarello in 1990. The Monprivato vineyard’s southwesterly aspect and limestone-rich soils has made it one of Barolo’s most coveted properties, considered ideal for the Nebbiolo grape variety. In the 1980s, a clone of Nebbiolo called Michét was planted in a small part of the vineyard as an experiment which became the estate’s highly regarded Monprivato Cà d’Morisso cuvée. This, alongside the regular Monprivato, is only made in outstanding vintages. The estate prefers traditional winemaking methods, with long fermentations and wines aged in large Slavonian oak casks known as “botti”. There is little intervention in the vineyard and grapes are harvested by hand.