Vietti Barolo Rocche di Castiglione 2020
£187.75
The wine
Rocche di Castiglione is the vineyard that started it all. In 1961 Alfredo Currado bottled it on its own, one of the first single-cru Barolos ever made, and it remains the estate signature. The steep sandy slope above Castiglione Falletto is prized for perfume and finesse rather than sheer weight, giving a Barolo of aromatic lift, fine-grained tannin and remarkable persistence.
Castiglione Falletto sits on the central ridge that divides Barolo, and Rocche is its most dramatic parcel, a near-cliff of sandy soil falling away below the village. Sand drains hard and gives tannins of unusual fineness, which is why the wine reads as elegant even when it is deeply structured. The bottling that launched the entire single-vineyard movement in Barolo, and still the wine by which the estate is measured.
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.
