From: Piemonte, Italy
Varietal: Nebbiolo

Taste & Critical Acclaim: The 2021 Valmaggiore is an exercise in restraint. It offers up pretty, uplifting aromas of red fruits, roses, white pepper and freshly-picked violets. On the palate, red fruits are front and center, framed by tobacco, spice and mineral notes. The tannins are both strong and soft yet give the wine its unmistakable mid-weight structure. The acidity is bracingly fresh, and the finish long and layered, with red fruits, graphite and earth notes lingering.
 
Ratings for the vintage 2021.

Falstaff 93 points,
James Suckling 91 points, Vini Buoni d'Italia 4 stelle, Vinous 94 points, Wine Enthusiast 92 points

The 2021 Valmaggiore Nebbiolo d’Alba is on the side of more structured examples of this bottling, yet shows potential for approachability with a few years of patience. Red cherry and raspberry perfumes mix with rose petal and licorice, framed by a hint of pepper. On the palate, it is mid-weight and nicely structured with red cherry and blackberry fruit. It shows great sweetness in the mouth, but is never cloying - it is a wine that speaks softly yet forcefully. The tannins are long, ripe and very structured but delicately framed, and its long, dry finish ends with a mineral note.

About this wine, from the winery. All "hand-made" our Valmaggiore is an amphitheater facing the south, with full exposure to the sun. Here, nature is rich and vigorous. The ground is soft and sandy, the slopes extremely steep. Already in the planting of the vineyard, the respect for nature and traditions were strategic. This respect is present every day: we cultivate by hand, row by row, from bud break to when we harvest the ripest grapes; we make our vineyard a laboratory for healthy and well-cultivated fruit.

The Nebbiolo in Roero. In Roero, a significant historic agricultural richness has been preserved, and not only in viticulture. Here, Nebbiolo is distinguished for its finesse and elegance and we, like those in the past who were also proud and certain, wish that our Valmaggiore wine expresses all the grace and refinement of Nebbiolo.

Here, Nebbiolo is distinguished for its finesse and elegance and we, like those in the past who were also proud and certain, wish that our Valmaggiore wine expresses all the grace and refinement of Nebbiolo.In any case, this wine evolves beautifully with time. We know that only with years of slow and silent evolution does Nebbiolo reveal its best character. Thus, our Valmaggiore Nebbiolo d'Alba is part of the „sibi et paucis" project. Winemaker Description. 

About Sandrone. Luciano Sandrone is one of the most iconic producers in Barolo, and his is both a well-known and extraordinary story. He started to learn viticulture at the age of 14 or 15. After years of work as a cellarman he depleted his life savings and purchased his first vineyard on the Cannubi hill in 1977, though he could only manage his land on the weekends while he continued to work. He made his first vintage in 1978, in his parents’ garage, and then spent years refining his ideas about how to make a wine of distinction and utmost quality that respected the traditions of Barolo while incorporating new ideas and understanding about viticulture and vinification. He made every vintage at home until 1999, when the winery he constructed in 1998 was ready for use.

Sandrone's wines are sometimes described as straddling the modern and traditional styles in the region: elegant, attractive, and easy to appreciate right from their first years in bottle, but with no less power and structure than traditional Barolos. Along with the extremely low yields in the vineyard and an obsessive attention to training, pruning, and harvesting, Sandrone has a very rational approach in the cellar. This approach, however, is also unique and outside of simple classification: Sandrone subjects his wines to a medium-length maceration period, shorter than traditional, but makes limited use of new oak in the maturation process, which takes place in 500-liter tonneaux, all signs of a more traditional approach in the cellar. The entire range of wines, all limited in production, are jewels of impeccably balanced concentration and precision and the ability to age for long periods of time.

Evolution of the vintage 2021. The 2020-2021 winter was extremely snowy, with cumulative snowfalls in higher elevations of the Barolo zone reaching 3+ meters over 4 snowfalls. The weather warmed in March and there were 2 weeks of unseasonably warm temperatures before the early April frost event. The frost lasted about 48 hours, depending on the site, and affected all of Europe. The vines had already begun budding and damages were luckily limited to lower elevations and places where air currents pushed the cold air up the hillsides. Fortunately, none of our vineyards were affected. 
 
Flowering was in the first week of June and coincided with the first period of real warmth. Thereafter, June and July were alternating warm-cool with well-timed rainstorms. The last significant summer rain was in mid-July, which also brought devastating hail to parts of Monforte, Novello and Roero.
 
Summer continued with little rainfall, contributing to what proved to be an excellent plant health and quality profile at harvest time.
In early September the night temperatures began to cool, and the plants received a bit of refreshment from a few rainstorms in the middle of September. General disease pressures were low in 2021 due to lack of humidity and good air circulation. Although there was little rainfall, this had virtually no effect on the grapevine, plants known for their capacity to resist.
 
The low yields, as expert viticulturists can tell, are a sure indicator of the high quality of the fruit.
There are significant temperature and climatic similarities between 2016 and 2021, including the high August heat. The biggest difference between the two growing seasons was water – in 2016, its relative abundance, versus its lack in 2021.
 
Harvest took place from September 29th until October 7th.