2018 Vietti Barolo Cerequio [V97][JD92][WA96] WINE

The 2018 Barolo Cerequio is a new wine in this range. Soaring aromatics and bright red-toned fruit give the Cerequio its effusive personality. Nuanced and deep with tremendous complexity and tons of character the Cerequio is dazzling. This is everything a great Barolo from Cerequio should be. In other words: textbook. More over it’s one of the best wines of this very uneven vintage.

Here’s an exciting new submission from Vietti. The 2018 Barolo Cerequio is lovely sporting a broad and enriched bouquet that paints a panoramic vision of this MGA that straddles the villages of La Morra and Barolo. Despite that wide vision this wine also excels at showing pinpoint details of wild cherry crushed stone and black licorice. Cerequio is a wine of latitude and depth. Tight tannins help to stitch it together into a comprehensive whole. Only 4925 bottles were made in this inaugural release. Congratulations. Vietti is one of the most dynamic wineries in the appellation. Starting with the 2019 vintage the entire production of Barolo and Barbera is certified organic. This set of new releases comes with three big surprises. There are three new wines in their inaugural release: the single-vineyard Barolo Cerequio (with fruit from La Morra) the Barolo Monvigliero from Verduno and the Barbaresco Masseria now entirely made with fruit from Roncaglie. The Monvigliero is a wine of special interest as it is made with 60% whole cluster fruit in collaboration with colleagues over at Borgogna. I also recently read that Luca Currado Vietti actually created a shared investment in Monvigliero in 2018 (for an 8000-square meter plot in the MGA) with a group of 10 American investors. Luca could not buy the property outright but under the terms of the shared agreement the investor group retains 45% of the production each year released under the Vietti label and Luca is left with the remaining 55%. The question is: What will he do with his share of that precious fruit?