The traditionalism of the Cappellano family in Serralunga d’Alba is not one of blind adherence to the past. It is a searching, intelligent traditionalism, one which prioritizes accumulated wisdom and connectedness to the land over the allure of technology and the pressures of the market. Read More
While Barolo’s style pendulum continues to swing away from the excesses of a few decades back, it is a true reward to work with an estate who never succumbed to modern technology’s seductive promises. The Brovia family established themselves as winegrowers in the hamlet of Castiglione Falletto in 1863, amassing over time an enviable collection of vineyards in some of the zone’s greatest crus…Read More
Barolo’s extraordinary geological and topographical complexity is echoed in the staggering variety of its wines—170 crus singing their paeans to Queen Nebbiolo in 170 unique dialects. As with all great winegrowing regions, however, the story of Barolo is the story of two inextricable histories: the glacial, impassive evolution of the earth itself and the feverish tumult of human endeavor which overlays it. As much as it is a story of valleys, ridges, sand, silt, and marl, then, so is Barolo a story of labor, land acquisition, political upheaval, ego, and fashion. Wine is the seam along which those two threads interweave, but—as the modernist missteps of a few years back illustrated—that seam will pucker under too heavy a human hand. Little is required for Barolo’s forceful origin-stamp to roar its pedigree, and we at Rosenthal Wine Merchant have always prized growers in this zone who understand that implicitly and enact it faithfully.
Each new release from the tiny Cappellano estate in Serralunga d’Alba is a cause for celebration. Although they have never courted the press—the legendary late Teobaldo Cappellano famously forbade critics from scoring his wines—they have developed a riotously enthusiastic following over the years for their uncompromisingly traditional, scintillatingly pure creations.
Great vintages are a tango. Nature leads the grower, and the dance is certainly strenuous, but she seems ultimately to want to create something beautiful. Some growing seasons, however, are 15-round boxing matches, with Nature doing her damndest to leave her much smaller opponent utterly crushed. And in 2014 in the Langhe, Mother Nature was
Each year, a rapt audience of Piemonte die-hards eagerly awaits the release of a new vintage from the Cappellano family in Serralunga d’Alba. In a zone so seduced by modern methods over the past few decades, Cappellano is the rare estate that never made concessions to technological trickery, never changed their wines to suit the