Barolo Bartolo Mascarello 2016

For all lovers of Barolo, of each sensitivity and orientation, ring the bell of via Roma 15 and be received, even for a greeting and a brief conversation in the office of this winemaker, as he likes to define itself proudly, it is a must. Ahead of Bartolo Mascarello, who ironically comments on the vinous events of Langa, while drawing and color one by one the imaginative labels of his Barolo coining slogans that have made people talk, they have passed, by well-known politicians, writers, journalists, artists, but also, and above all, legions of fans for whom Bartolo (Barolo) Mascarello is a symbol, a tenacious defender of tradition, ( "the last of the Mohicans" likes to be called), and the witness of a long history and identity of the wine that come from afar.
This story departs from the nineteenth-century roots of this unique wine, and the experience of his father, Julius, in 1918, fresh from harsh experience of war, and impressed by the great difficulties faced by the small Barolo Wine Cooperative, the eldest son of a winemaking family decides to go for it alone and become a winemaker.
Growing step by step, flanking the traditional trade wine private in carboys, a small production in the bottle, and acquiring small parcels of vines in some of the best Barolo, in Cannubi, San Lorenzo and Rué, and then, later in the fortresses of La Morra, the winery has gained a solid reputation and undoubted prestige. That grow again, when, after the war, and then in the early sixties, to support Giulio Mascarello (Barolo appointed first mayor after the Liberation), comes into his son Bartolo.
In addition to increase, significantly, the share of bottled wine, Bartolo does not in any way change the mode of operation of his father, he continued for many years an incredible and extremely Freisa, but "nebbioloed", by passing it briefly on the skins of Nebbiolo, and without being in any way deviated by the growing French practice of making wine and bottling, single vineyard, with the inevitable result of fragmenting production, He maintains all barolesca to assemble the various grapes faithful to the characteristic coming from different vineyards, to ensure greater balance and harmony to a superior wine.
And the habit of proceeding to a single cuvée, as a result of the 4 vineyards  (3 hectares from the total 5 Nebbiolo, which also comprise a part in Barbera d'Alba, Dolcetto d'Alba and Freisa ), remained even now. Alongside Bartolo, there is his wife; because of his sickness, he can't walk his beloved vineyards and remains to attend to all the onerous responsibilities that a winemaker has, as well as his wife, discreet presence, the daughter Maria Teresa, humanities study, but inevitably drawn into wine. A landing place for her and family tradition, of course, which provides vinification with long maceration and patient aging of Barolo not in barrels (cellar tool that Bartolo avowed enemy, to the point of proclaiming, in words, on various labels) but in large oak barrels, but bringing the strength of its feminine sensibility, a personal contribution in terms of further aromatic fragrance and freshness of the wines, also allowed by a progressive replacement of the winery woods. Because the tradition, according to Mascarello, is never mummified, but always open to new ideas, without cutting the roots with the past from which we come.