Paolo Conterno Barolo Riva del Bric 2018
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Spirits
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Typical garnet red. Bouquet packed with floral and fruity aromas. Elegant, robust body, nicely soft on the finish; showing hints of cherries and wild berries.
Pairs well with red meats and game. Sirloin steak, roast kid, mature hard cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
This wine shows the power of nebbiolo grown in the clay-rich soils of Monforte d’Alba. Its tannins are dense and ferrous, providing a cool embrace for the fresh red-cherry flavors. Hints of juniper, licorice and thyme weave through the wine as it gains brightness and verve on the finish, indicating good aging potential.
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Wine Spectator
Velvety in texture, evoking macerated plum, cherry, menthol, iron, tar and toasty spice flavors. This red is firm, yet the tannins are civilized, and it ultimately turns dusty in the end. Best from 2025 through 2040.
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James Suckling
I like the bright, fruity character to this young Barolo. Plenty of red and black berries, together with citrus-tinged spice. Medium to full body with fine tannins that are sinking nicely into the wine, allowing the bright fruit to push through. Nice to taste now and will start to drink well from 2024.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Barolo Riva del Bric (with 20,000 bottles released) shows mature fruit with dried cherry and baked plum. The wine also exhibits a good amount of spice and tarry leather, giving it extra heft and concentration. There's some bitterness too, with a hint of astringency on the rigid, young tannins that need more time to relax. The high 15% alcohol content is unfortunate, but it's common in this vintage.
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Wine
It all started way back in 1886, when Paolo Conterno founded the Casa della Ginestra, dedicated to the production of Nebbiolo, Barbera and Dolcetto wines. An indefatigable worker with a mind of great intuition, he devoted the most favourable parts of the Ginestra hillside to the growing of the grapes, subdividing them by type, exposure and terrain. Furthermore, he had the foresight to predict the existence of a market of connoisseurs of superior quality products, selling his own wine in wooden kegs and produced by himself in his own cellar. Paolo was succeeded by his son Carlo and his wife Giuseppina. The company was subsequently run by Paolo and Caterina Conterno and today the company is managed by their son Giorgio.
As in the past, each of us makes his own contribution, caring for the vineyards with scrupulous dedication, involving the successive generations. At one time, trust was placed in the few means available, and in perseverance and determination. Modern technology, with its labour-saving devices, spares us the exertions of those times and, in part thanks to the experience we have gained, enables us to operate in the best possible way and to reap great satisfaction and ever newer stimuli from our work
Responsible for some of the most elegant and age-worthy wines in the world, Nebbiolo, named for the ubiquitous autumnal fog (called nebbia in Italian), is the star variety of northern Italy’s Piedmont region. Grown throughout the area, as well as in the neighboring Valle d’Aosta and Valtellina, it reaches its highest potential in the Piedmontese villages of Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero. Outside of Italy, growers are still very much in the experimentation stage but some success has been achieved in parts of California. Somm Secret—If you’re new to Nebbiolo, start with a charming, wallet-friendly, early-drinking Langhe Nebbiolo or Nebbiolo d'Alba.
The center of the production of the world’s most exclusive and age-worthy red wines made from Nebbiolo, the Barolo wine region includes five core townships: La Morra, Monforte d’Alba, Serralunga d’Alba, Castiglione Falletto and the Barolo village itself, as well as a few outlying villages. The landscape of Barolo, characterized by prominent and castle-topped hills, is full of history and romance centered on the Nebbiolo grape. Its wines, with the signature “tar and roses” aromas, have a deceptively light garnet color but full presence on the palate and plenty of tannins and acidity. In a well-made Barolo wine, one can expect to find complexity and good evolution with notes of, for example, strawberry, cherry, plum, leather, truffle, anise, fresh and dried herbs, tobacco and violets.
There are two predominant soil types here, which distinguish Barolo from the lesser surrounding areas. Compact and fertile Tortonian sandy marls define the vineyards farthest west and at higher elevations. Typically the Barolo wines coming from this side, from La Morra and Barolo, can be approachable relatively early on in their evolution and represent the “feminine” side of Barolo, often closer in style to Barbaresco with elegant perfume and fresh fruit.
On the eastern side of the Barolo wine region, Helvetian soils of compressed sandstone and chalks are less fertile, producing wines with intense body, power and structured tannins. This more “masculine” style comes from Monforte d’Alba and Serralunga d’Alba. The township of Castiglione Falletto covers a spine with both soil types.
The best Barolo wines need 10-15 years before they are ready to drink, and can further age for several decades.