Notes from Rare Wine Co.:

"As it was in G.B.’s day, the greatest Burlotto wine is the magical Barolo from Verduno’s Monvigliero vineyard. The greatness of Monvigliero lies in its signature aromatics, which are unlike any Barolo we’ve ever experienced. Its astonishingly intense, and instantly recognizable, perfume of Provençal black olive tapenade, cedar and truffle is nothing short of hypnotic. And it could come from no place else on earth. It is the essence of its terroir.

Like his ancestors, Fabio approaches Monvigliero in a way that is both classical and idiosyncratic—to extract the vineyard’s essential greatness. At the core of this technique is a gentle crushing of all the grapes by foot, an incredible 60-day maceration on the skins and, of course, long aging in large wood botti. It’s an approach virtually unheard of today, yet its brilliance is revealed in every glass of this unique Barolo.

In fact, Monvigliero’s magic must have as much do with the technique as it does the vineyard’s relatively high altitude or the 45-year-old vines in limestone-rich soil.

The foot treading avoids the problem of mechanical extraction: breaking the seeds and tannins, which causes bitterness. It also explains how Monvigliero’s fruit can withstand sixty days of skin contact—a practice that once flourished in the Langhe’s greatest cellars but vanished by the 1980s. The combination of foot treading, long maceration and traditional botte-aging produces a wine of powerful structure, but with an ethereally delicate mouthfeel."