2019 Cordero di Montezemolo Monfalletto Barolo 750 ml

The Cordero di Montezemolo’s Monfalletto Barolo is one of our best-selling Barolos—ever—and the 2019 is the most impressive edition we’ve tasted. It boasts 95-point praise from Wine Advocate, who noted its “muscle and brawn,” coming from a vintage that put a spotlight on those qualities. 

Cordero di Montezemolo is in La Morra, one of Piedmont’s most renowned Barolo villages. For 19 generations now, the Cordero di Montezemolo family has presided over a parcel that Antonio Galloni called “one of the most picturesque properties in all of Piedmont.”

It’s one of the few estates in Barolo that covers contiguous vineyards—a rare occurrence, since many wineries draw Nebbiolo from an assortment of different sites—and that makes it easier to farm, and improves the quality of the grapes that inform this wine. Selected from the estate’s prime plots, the Monfalletto provides a perfectly polished snapshot of the family’s exquisite estate. 

At the highest point of the organically farmed property is a Lebanon Cedar so iconic in the region that the Italian Air Force uses it to navigate. Rows of Nebbiolo vines radiate down from the tree, the grapes for the Monfalletto coming from 15- to 50-year-old plantings that enjoy southeast and southwest exposures. The vines dig deep into clay and calcareous soils that impart gorgeous elegance and complexity to the berries. Separate lots are aged in both French and Slovenian wood for 18–24 months before blending, bottling, and another year of cellaring. 

The 2019 is a tremendous success for Cordero di Montezemolo, who harnessed the modern-classic vintage with aplomb to deliver a triumph with easily two decades of evolution ahead of it.