Cascina Luisin - 'Asili', Barbaresco, Piedmont, Italy (2019)

TASTING NOTES

Tense and layered. This is a great old-school Barbaresco, dusty and leathery with beautiful rose petals and tar notes. A classic. 

The Minuto family, of which Cascina Luisin’s current proprietor Roberto Minuto is the eighth generation, have been producing and selling their own wines since the 1860s and began bottling in 1913 (one of the two first estates to do so).

Encompassing eight hectares worth of 45- to 65-year-old vines, Cascina Luisin produces nervy, expressive, highly traditional wines from some of Barbaresco’s greatest sites—Asili and Rabajà among them. Roberto employs low-impact farming, retaining grass and vegetation and employing only copper and sulfur to treat the vineyards, except in truly disastrous vintages such as 2002 and 2014. The wines ferment without added yeasts in old non-thermoregulated concrete vessels, with macerations lasting between 30 and 60 days (and sometimes as many as 90); aging is conducted in large Slavonian casks custom-built by the renowned Stockinger cooperage; sulphites are added only when the wines are racked, and bottling takes place without fining or filtration.