Vietti Barolo Lazzarito 2020
£185.25
The wine
Lazzarito rises above Serralunga d'Alba, the sternest and most structured corner of the Barolo commune. A powerful wine with alluring aromas of herbaceous tones, tobacco and pepper, through to a robust palate with profound tannins and a taut minerality leading to a persistent finish.
Serralunga sits on Helvetian soils, older, poorer and more compacted than the marls to the west, and vines there struggle in a way that shows in the glass as tannic backbone and mineral austerity. Lazzarito is one of its landmark sites, steep and well exposed. These are the Barolos that most reward patience: closed and demanding in youth, then extraordinarily long-lived, and worth decanting for several hours if opened early.
The producer
Vietti
View all Vietti winesVietti is one of the defining names of Piedmont, based in the village of Castiglione Falletto at the heart of Barolo. The family have grown grapes here since the nineteenth century, but the estate as we know it was shaped by Alfredo Currado, who married Luciana Vietti in 1957 and spent the next four decades changing what Piedmont thought possible.
Two things made his name. In 1961 he bottled Barolo from the Rocche di Castiglione vineyard on its own, one of the first single-cru Barolos ever released, at a time when almost everything was blended across the commune. The idea that individual sites deserved their own bottling is now orthodoxy; then it was heresy. He also rescued Arneis, the white grape of the Roero, which had fallen to a handful of rows and was days from disappearing altogether.
The range here runs from Roero Arneis and Timorasso through Barbera and Langhe Nebbiolo to seven Barolo crus and a Barbaresco, each farmed and vinified separately. Vietti labels have carried commissioned artwork since 1974, which is why no two look quite alike.
