Drink Barolo before you die!
Why? Because this iron fist in a velvet glove is the king of wines and the wine of kings.
Ten Second Summary
- What it is: A dry red wine from Piedmont in north-west Italy, made entirely from Nebbiolo.
- Tastes like: Red cherry, rose, violet, liquorice, herbs and spice, developing dried fruit, tobacco, leather, truffle and sometimes tar with age. Pale in colour; high in acidity and tannin.
- Buying shortcut: Start with a good producer’s regular Barolo — G.D. Vajra Albe or Massolino are both excellent introductions — before chasing famous single-vineyard wines, or go straight to the 10 Barolos worth the bucket list ↓
- Best with: Braised beef, game, mushrooms, rich pasta and ragù, mature cheeses and white truffle.
- When to drink: Serious, traditionally styled Barolo often rewards 8–15 years from vintage; a good 20-year-old bottle can be magnificent.
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| Vineyards in the Langhe wine region of Piedmont | © Jakub / stock.adobe.com. Resized for web. |
What's on this page
- Why Barolo is bucket list worthy
- An iron fist in a velvet glove
- The king of wines and the wine of kings
- Barolo before Barolo
- 100% Nebbiolo — no safety net
- Barolo's real secret: place
- The Barolo Wars
- Ageing and cellaring
- Where to start
- Ten Barolos worth the bucket list
- What does Barolo taste like, and what do you eat with it?
- A few quick questions
- Final thoughts
Why Barolo is bucket list worthy
An iron fist in a velvet glove
The phrase wasn't coined for Barolo — it's an old political metaphor wine writers borrowed — but Barolo wears it exceptionally well.
Nebbiolo doesn't make the dark, opaque wine you'd expect from something this powerful — Barolo can be translucent ruby or garnet, almost delicate to look at. The nose doesn't prepare you either: roses, violets, cherries, dried flowers, orange peel, herbs, spice. Very pretty.
Then you taste it. Whack.
Barolo has naturally high acidity and abundant tannin; young examples can be mouth-puckeringly firm. That tension between fragrance and structure is what makes great Barolo so compelling — ethereal on the nose, built to develop for decades on the palate. Iron fist. Velvet glove. Hard to improve on it.
The king of wines and the wine of kings
This nickname has genuine history behind it. Barolo became closely tied to Piedmont's aristocracy, and especially to the House of Savoy, in the nineteenth century. The Savoys didn't just drink it; they helped make it.
Giulia Falletti, Marchioness of Barolo, appears to have introduced King Carlo Alberto of Sardinia to the wine in the early 1830s. He bought it for his royal court and produced it himself at Pollenzo and Verduno. His son, Vittorio Emanuele II, became an even bigger producer, buying Fontanafredda in Serralunga d'Alba and making Barolo for the royal household before becoming the first king of a unified Italy in 1861. "Wine of kings" isn't a marketing invention — actual kings were making the stuff.
There's also an irresistible legend: that Carlo Alberto, impatient to taste the wine, was sent 325 ox-drawn carts of it by the Marchioness — one barrel for every day of the year bar the 40 days of Lent. Magnificent story, almost certainly untrue; historian Kerin O'Keefe notes that while the Falletti–Carlo Alberto connection is real, historians don't take the cart tale seriously. Never let the truth spoil a good wine story. The rest is documented anyway.
Barolo before Barolo
Nebbiolo had grown around the Langhe for centuries before modern Barolo existed. A shipment of "Barol" reached England in 1751 and was judged comparable to Bordeaux; Thomas Jefferson tasted a Nebbiolo-based wine in Turin in 1787 and liked it enough to order several dozen bottles. Calling it "a pleasing wine". But these wines probably weren't much like today's — accounts suggest they often held residual sugar and could even be sparkling.
In his travel notes, Jefferson described the wine as "... about as sweet as the silky Madeira, as astringent on the palate as Bordeaux, and as brisk as Champagne." I think these three comparisons can still hold today if sweet like Madeira refers to fruit sweetness rather than residual sugar sweetness. And, brisk like Champagne referes to Barolo's elevated acidity rather than effervescence.
Who actually turned Nebbiolo dry is murkier than legend admits. The old story has Frenchman Louis Oudart arriving to teach the locals dry fermentation — a nice tale, and probably mostly nonsense. More recent research points to Italian general and winemaking expert Paolo Francesco Staglieno, whose 1835 manual advocated fully dry fermentation and better hygiene, and who later worked for both Cavour and Carlo Alberto. Documents show dry wine was already being made under his guidance before Oudart got involved. History is rarely as tidy as wine marketing would like.
100% Nebbiolo — no safety net
Barolo must be entirely Nebbiolo. No Cabernet for colour, no Merlot to soften the tannins, no Syrah to beef it up. Just Nebbiolo — a peculiar grape that buds early, ripens late, and is highly sensitive to site: relatively light in colour yet intensely tannic and acidic, extraordinarily aromatic, capable of immense complexity with age. In the wrong place it's underwhelming; on the right Langhe hillside, it's one of the world's great wines.
Barolo's real secret: place
Saying Barolo is made from Nebbiolo is a bit like saying red Burgundy is made from Pinot Noir — true, but not nearly enough. Barolo comes from hills south-west of Alba across 11 communes, including Barolo, La Morra, Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga d'Alba and Monforte d'Alba, home to some of Italy's most celebrated vineyard names: Cannubi, Brunate, Bussia, Monprivato, Vigna Rionda and Monvigliero.
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| Brunate MGA, shared by Barolo and La Morra | © Vietti / vietti.com. Resized for web. |
Since 2010, Barolo has had officially defined geographical mentions — MGAs, or Menzioni Geografiche Aggiuntive — 181 of them, covering 170 vineyard areas and 11 villages. Don't mistake this for Burgundy, though: an MGA is a geographical designation, not a quality ranking. There's no Barolo equivalent of Grand Cru and Premier Cru. Some sites are undoubtedly better regarded than others — the government just isn't telling you which.
Traditionally, Barolo is divided into two broad styles: Barolo and La Morra are softer and more fragrant; Serralunga d'Alba and Monforte d'Alba are firmer and longer-lived; Castiglione Falletto sits in between. There's some geological basis for this, but don't take it too literally — vine age, vintage, farming and winemaking all complicate the picture, and two vineyards metres apart can have wildly different soils. Useful starting point, not a law of nature.
The Barolo Wars
As if Barolo needed more complication, producers spent the 1980s and '90s arguing over how it should be made. Traditionalists aged it long in large old botti; a younger generation wanted cleaner fruit and softer tannins, and brought shorter macerations, rotary fermenters and small French barriques — sometimes rather a lot of them. The conflict became known as the Barolo Wars: modernists said their methods gave cleaner, more approachable wine, while traditionalists said heavy extraction and new oak obliterated what made Nebbiolo special, turning roses and cherries into vanilla and espresso.
Eventually everyone calmed down. The old split is much less useful today — most producers borrow from both, and even strict traditionalists now farm and vinify with a precision unimaginable generations ago. Probably progress. Personally, I don't want Barolo to taste of oak — Nebbiolo is interesting enough already.
Ageing and cellaring
Barolo can't simply be fermented, bottled and rushed onto the market. Under the official Barolo DOCG production regulations, Barolo must age for a minimum of 38 months, including at least 18 months in wood. The ageing period is calculated from 1 November of the harvest year, and the wine cannot be released for sale before 1 January of the fourth year following the harvest.
Barolo Riserva has to wait considerably longer: at least 62 months from 1 November of the harvest year, again including a minimum of 18 months in wood. It cannot be released before 1 January of the sixth year following the harvest.
Those rules are part of why Barolo is expensive: producers have land, grapes, barrels, wine and money tied up for years before a bottle can be sold. The regulations don't dictate the type or size of wooden vessel, so producers can use enormous traditional botti, smaller French barrels, or a combination of the two. Either way, the best Barolo should taste of Nebbiolo and its site, not the cooper.
How long to cellar it once you've bought it depends on producer, vintage, storage and taste. Young Barolo gives bright fruit, roses and often a great deal of tannin. With age, cherries and flowers move towards dried fruit, tobacco, leather, earth, mushroom and truffle, and the tannins soften. For a serious, traditionally styled Barolo, eight to fifteen years from vintage often beats drinking it on release, and a good twenty-year-old bottle can be magnificent. But don't wait forever for some imagined moment of perfection. You only have so many bottles left. Drink some.
Where to start
You do not need to begin with Giacomo Conterno's Monfortino. Start with a good producer's regular Barolo instead. Despite the modern obsession with vineyard names, single-vineyard Barolo isn't inherently superior — historically Barolo was often blended across vineyards, to balance perfume from one site against structure from another, and some great producers still work that way.
G.D. Vajra's Barolo Albe and Massolino's regular Barolo are both excellent introductions. Learn what Barolo tastes like before chasing Cannubi and Brunate — there'll be plenty of time to empty your bank account later.
Ten Barolos worth the bucket list
Any top-ten list will annoy someone; there are far more than ten great producers. But these give a sense of how varied Barolo is.
1. Giacomo Conterno — Barolo Riserva Monfortino
Italy's great trophy wine, probably the most famous Barolo of all: traditional, immensely structured, built for the long haul. The price is equally formidable.
Find Giacomo Conterno Monfortino on Wine-Searcher
2. Bartolo Mascarello — Barolo
Defiantly unfashionable: a blend of vineyards rather than separate crus, on the theory the parts add up to more together. A benchmark traditional wine.
Find Bartolo Mascarello Barolo on Wine-Searcher
3. Bruno Giacosa — Falletto Vigna Le Rocche Barolo Riserva
Perfume, precision, formidable structure, real longevity — Barolo at the elegant end of greatness.
Find Bruno Giacosa Falletto Vigna Le Rocche on Wine-Searcher
4. Giuseppe Mascarello e Figlio — Barolo Monprivato
A historic Castiglione Falletto vineyard tied to the Mascarello family for generations; famous for longevity, fragrance and a pure Nebbiolo expression.
Find Giuseppe Mascarello Monprivato on Wine-Searcher
5. Giuseppe Rinaldi — Barolo Brunate
From one of traditional Barolo's great defenders: magnificent perfume with real depth underneath. Velvet glove, iron fist, again.
Find Giuseppe Rinaldi Brunate on Wine-Searcher
6. G.B. Burlotto — Barolo Monvigliero
Verduno's Monvigliero has become one of Barolo's most coveted sites, and Burlotto is its standard-bearer — fragrant, graceful proof that power needn't mean heaviness.
Find G.B. Burlotto Monvigliero on Wine-Searcher
7. Massolino — Barolo Vigna Rionda Riserva
A great Serralunga d'Alba vineyard, given long maturation before release: structured and complex, and a good explanation of Serralunga's reputation for longevity.
Find Massolino Vigna Rionda Riserva on Wine-Searcher
8. Cavallotto — Barolo Bricco Boschis
Owned by the Cavallotto family since 1928. Traditional and savoury, and usually easier to find than the cult names above.
Find Cavallotto Bricco Boschis on Wine-Searcher
9. Vietti — Barolo Rocche di Castiglione
A highlight among Vietti's many single-MGA bottlings: perfumed, fine and silky, with enough tannin underneath to remind you what you're drinking.
Find Vietti Rocche di Castiglione on Wine-Searcher
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| Vietti Barolo Rocche di Castiglione | © Vietti / vietti.com. Resized for web. |
10. G.D. Vajra — Barolo Albe
Deliberately not Vajra's rarest wine — a blend from high-altitude vineyards that's a wonderful introduction without remortgaging the house. Bucket-list wine should be drunk, not admired on Wine-Searcher.
Find G.D. Vajra Barolo Albe on Wine-Searcher
What does Barolo taste like, and what do you eat with it?
Young Barolo shows red cherry, raspberry, rose, violet, liquorice, herbs and spice, set against high acidity and high tannin — a delicate aroma over a palate that's anything but. With age it turns savoury: dried fruit, tobacco, leather, earth, mushroom, truffle, and sometimes the famous smell of tar. "Tar and roses" is another cliché that happens to be a good one.
Barolo wants food with substance: braised beef (brasato al Barolo is the classic pairing), game, mushrooms, rich pasta and ragù, mature cheeses. It also comes from the same corner of Piedmont famous for Alba's white truffles, and mature Barolo with truffle makes a great deal of sense. What I wouldn't do is open a fiercely tannic young Barolo alongside something delicate — the food may never be seen again.
A few quick questions
Barolo versus Barbaresco?
Both are pure Nebbiolo from neighbouring parts of the Langhe. The shorthand — Barolo more powerful, Barbaresco softer and earlier-drinking — has some truth to it, but falls apart once you look at individual producers. There are delicate Barolos and powerful Barbarescos.
Is Barolo dry or sweet?
Modern Barolo is dry. Its ancestors often weren't, probably because fermentation frequently stalled before all the sugar converted — reliably dry Barolo is a nineteenth-century development.
Why is Barolo so expensive?
Some Barolo is expensive; Barolo itself doesn't have to be. The costliest bottles combine famous producer, famous vineyard, tiny production and huge demand. Very good Barolo from excellent producers costs far less than the cult wines. Buy that first.
Should you decant Barolo?
Young Barolo often benefits from air, to soften its tannins. Old Barolo needs more care: decant mainly to separate the wine from sediment, not to give a fragile bottle hours of oxygen.
Final thoughts
Barolo isn't the easiest great wine in the world, and that's probably part of its charm. Nebbiolo makes you work a little: young Barolo can be ferociously tannic, the vineyard names are confusing, and the best bottles need patience and a fairly robust credit card. No wine turns profound just because someone charges $500 for it — but you don't need Monfortino to understand why Barolo matters. Find a good producer, buy a decent bottle, cook something substantial, and see what the fuss is about.
Great Barolo can smell delicate while tasting powerful, look pale yet formidable, seem elegant yet be built to survive decades. An iron fist in a velvet glove. And with kings producing it on their own estates in the nineteenth century, "the king of wines and the wine of kings" isn't such a ridiculous title either.
Put Barolo on your bucket list.
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