Elio Altare - Barolo "Unoperuno" 2019 (1.5L)
Price: $699.99
| Producer | Elio Altare |
| Country | Italy |
| Region | Piedmont |
| Varietal | Nebbiolo |
| Vintage | 2019 |
| Sku | 67942 |
| Size | 1.5L |
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Elio Altare Description
History of Unoperuno:
First vintage of Unoperuno is 2010, born almost as a game, as a bet in the family. In spring 2010 at a family lunch my dad Elio served a bottle of Larigi (barbera) 1986, notoriously not a great vintage because of hail and rain and a wine we rarely drank because of the very few bottles left in the family library, with great surprise the wine was fantastic.
To quote Antonio Galloni “ The 1986 Vigna Larigi is the first in what will turn out to be a series of remarkable wines. Graphite, wild herbs and black cherries are some of the nuances that emerge from this deeply-colored Barbera. The fruit remains vibrant and incredibly pure all the way through to the long, polished finish, and the balance is simply awesome.In this hail-plagued vintage Altare harvested literally berry by berry, and the proof is in the glass. This Barbera is so alive and full of life it is hard to believe.”
This great bottle Larigi 1986 was born because Elio, on a very difficult vintage where most of the grapes had been damaged by the hail and the rain, decided to hand-destem in order to pull out only the few good berries left, as a result only 2 barriques were made / 600 bts of a great Barbera were born.
Harvest 2010 arrived soon, with almost a prefect growing season the grapes were looking great as ever but we thought: why don’t we give it a try and hand-destem the berries of Nebbiolo? and why not starting with our historic family vineyard Arborina?
The idea behind the project was to maximize the purity of the fruit, making sure there were no stems, leaves or undesirable berries or bugs or any extra parts left in the maceration.
Nebbiolo is very hard to fully destem because the jacks are naturally fragile and as much as your destemming machine is technological and expensive it would never be as accurate as doing the work by hand.
The name was finally born with the first official release in 2011: UNOPERUNO literally means “one by one” in Italian, no better name would explain the work behind, a painstaking and time-consuming labor of love that had never been done before in Barolo.
Within the years we have been able to refine the work and accelerate the timing to produce it, timing which has dropped to about one week now, the production is always very limited, 3 to 5 barriques / 900 to 1.500 bts are produced and here is the idea of the blend:
A super- duper blend of all our owned and rented vineyards: Arborina (La Morra), Cannubi (Barolo), Cerretta (Serralunga), Pernanno (Castiglione Falletto), Sarmassa (Barolo)
What we are looking for is a silky Barolo that speaks to finesse: sweet, perfumed and lifted in the glass, intensely aromatic, succulent red cherries, spices and wild flowers that all grace the palate.
Wine Advocate: 97 Points
Made with a bend of fruit from Arborina (in La Morra), Cannubi (in Barolo) and Badarina and Ceretta (in Serralunga d'Alba), Silvia Altare calls her 2019 Barolo Unoperuno a "super mega blend of classic single-vineyard sites." The berries are hand selected in the most excruciating manner to avoid all stems, leaves, ugly berries, bugs and so forth. Indeed, "unoperuno" means "one by one" in Italian, and that gives you an idea of the exacting work required to make this very limited-production wine (with about 1,200 bottles released annually in the fall). "Everyone is moving toward stem inclusion," Silvia tells me: "We are moving in the opposite direction." These results are softly elegant with ripe tannins and lots of dark fruit and black cherry at the back. There are mild mineral tones and a hint of earth or rust.
Vinous: 95 Points
The 2019 Barolo Unoperuno is a wine of total class and elegance. Bright and translucent, with compelling inner sweetness, the 2019 is flat-out gorgeous. Crushed red berry fruit, orange zest, cedar and sweet pipe tobacco are all finely delineated. There's terrific energy and verge here. Give this a few years to come together.
