Cascina Luisin - 'Paolin', Barbaresco, Piedmont, Italy (2017)

TASTING NOTES

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

Luisin’s non-vineyard-specific Barbaresco “Paolin” comes from various holdings throughout the zone, but is built primarily around 45-year-old vines in the sandy south-facing cru of Basarin in Neive.

Fermentation of 40 days in concrete tanks, malolactic fermentation carried out in oak barrels, refining of a few months in oak barrels plus 30 months in bottle.

As with all of the estate’s Barbaresco, this ferments naturally in concrete and ages in large custom-built Stockinger casks of Slavonian-oak origin. Gentler in its structure and slightly more fruit-forward than the three wines below, “Paolin” offers a sense of understated elegance wed to a mouthwatering mineral tension that feels close to a platonic ideal of Barbaresco, and it is strikingly accessible even in an early stage of its development.