Nebbiolo Prima 2019 and 2020: Producer focus

Nebbiolo Prima is an arduous but rewarding tasting event for wine professionals, allowing them to taste blind hundreds of wines over five days. In the evenings we can let our hair down. Most years, four wineries host a dual-purpose event: a poured tasting of their wines for journalists, and alongside it, a party for family, friends, and neighbours.

When the journalists emerge from the tasting room, the dinner is in full swing: antipasti, two pastas, meat and more. Platters are brought from the kitchen and guests just help themselves, while sturdy cooks circulate with vats of pasta. At the same time a sideboard is crammed with dozens of bottles, mostly Barolo, some left over from the tasting, others from different vintages.

It’s a party, so I only scribble notes when a particular wine grabs my attention. The attraction is being able to sip and compare different vintages with food, a great contrast with the monastic severity of the tasting room.

The host winery for the event was Giovanni Abrigo in Diano d’Alba, but although it made a fine Barolo Ravera in 2016, its speciality is Dolcetto d’Alba Garabei, from 50-year-old vines, and with a surprising ageing potential. Below are some of the other top wines noted in 2019 and 2020 from the following producers.

M&V Adriano

Marco and Vittorio Adriano are brothers with a winery near Alba in the village of San Rocco Seno d’Elvio. They first began producing and bottling their own wines in 1994. It’s very much a family operation, and since 2014 Vittorio’s daughter Michela has joined the team. A part of the village’s vineyards lie within the Barbaresco DOCG, and the brothers produce two wines with this appellation. The first is a blend of two sites (Bricco and Frati) in San Rocco called ‘Sanadaive’, which is the dialect name of the village; and the other is a single-vineyard wine from the south-facing Basarin in Neive, with its mostly marl soils.

Fermentation takes place in stainless steel, with a moderate maceration period, especially for Sanadaive. Both Barolos are aged traditionally in large casks. Basarin’s richer soils and longer maceration do show in the wine, which is more structured than Sanadaive, the latter being intended for earlier drinking although the average age of the vines is older here than in Basarin.

Giacomo Fenocchio

The sympathetic Claudio Fenocchio took over after his father’s death in 1989, and has maintained the family’s resolutely traditional approach. The property dates back to 1864. He farms 14 hectares, and although the viticulture is essentially organic, with no herbicides or chemical fertilisers, Fenocchio is not certified. Bussia is the estate’s great prize, with 5 hectares of mostly southwest-facing vines on clay, limestone and iron. There are smaller plots, between 0.5 and 1 hectare, in other prestigious sites such as Cannubi, Villero, and Castellero. Villero has the oldest vines, with an average age of 65 years.

Claudio ferments the wines with indigenous yeasts and a maceration of 40 days is not unusual here. The Riserva is ’90 Di’, referring to the fact that the wine spends up to 90 days under a submerged cap in wooden vats, thus delivering an extremely long maceration period. The result is controversial, as not everyone agrees that the wine benefits from such prolonged vinification and ageing. (The 2013, tasted in 2019, packed a punch but was dominated by tannins.)

Monchiero

Based in Castiglione Falletto, Monchiero also own vineyards in Roddi and Verduno, but their Barolo comes from Castiglione. Since 2017 Vittorio Monchiero has been aided by his sons Luca and Stefano. The winemaking is traditional, with submerged-cap fermentation and long ageing in large casks. Bottling began in the 1970s and in the 1990s the family replanted its vineyards. Rocche di Castiglione is the most important site for Barolo: it’s steep, at up to 400 metres, faces southeast, and Vittorio ascribes the wine’s elegance to the sand in the soil.

In contrast to Rocche, there is a less well-known site called Montanello, which faces southwest and has a good deal of clay in the soil. This gives wines of considerable tannic density and structure, which is why it is often made as a Riserva. The generic Barolo is also sourced from their vineyards in Castiglione Falletto.

Stephen Brook’s top Nebbiolo Prima picks from 2019 and 2020