2019 Barolo Castelletto Vigna Pressenda Conterno Fantino

Bright red. Cedar, wild strawberries, chocolate, coffee, roses and violets on the nose and in the mouth. Beautifully delineated and precise, this is powerful but has an utterly silky texture. In recent years, this has often been Conterno Fantino’s best wine of the year, and that’s saying quite something about just how good this winery’s portion of the Castelletto cru must be, given that Conterno Fantino’s Ginestra holdings (Vigna del Gris and Sorì Ginestra give usually spectacular wines). Made with the use of horizontal rotofermenters, this spent two weeks on the skins and was aged twelve months in barriques (one-third new, one-third one year old and one-third two years old) followed by another twelve months in large oak casks.

The 2019 Barolo Castelletto Vigna Pressenda is gorgeous. Delicate and perfumed in the glass, the 2019 offers up a beguiling mélange of dark red cherry, rose petal, mint, cedar, blood orange, spice and crushed autumn leaves. In 2019, the Monforte tannins are especially refined, something that is very rarely the case here at this stage. What a wonderfully precise, sophisticated, nuanced wine this is. Impressive.

The Conterno Fantino 2019 Barolo Castelletto Vigna Pressenda is medium dark and more concentrated compared to many of its peers. This wine shows a solid bouquet with fixed aromas of wild cherry, long-stemmed rose and candied orange. With time, even more floral aromas are coaxed forward from the bouquet. Beyond those are oak-driven notes of allspice and cinnamon. The tannins are polished, and the wine offers quite a bit of fruit texture.

Presents cherry, raspberry, sun-kissed hay, mineral and spice aromas and flavors that curl around an acidic spine and tannins. This has all the right components, matched to a slim, taut frame, with fine length.