Wines

From a rented parcel on the hillside between the Castelinaldo and Vezza d’Alba, Luisin’s Roero Arneis “Ave” is raised in steel on its fine lees and bottled after one year with a small amount of sulfur dioxide. Rich but controlled, it offers variety-typical notes of crunchy apricot and anise, with a beam of rippling acidity keeping it dynamic and brisk, and its overall sense of carefully rendered precision is of a piece with its red stablemates.

The more traditional sibling to Luisin's Barbera from the cru Axilium, the “Maggiur” comes from a plot of vines almost a century old in San Rocco Seno d’Elvio of Alba. Fermentation takes place in stainless steel with a one week maceration, followed by one year in large oak cask. A well-balanced Barbera, with lively acidity, brisk and clean, and dark, spicy fruit.

Roberto owns a tiny sliver of Barbera in the highly regarded cru of Asili (“Axilium” is a play on the name of the cru), in the commune of Barbaresco, and from it he produces a wine that showcases in eye-popping fashion the variety’s ability to deliver enormous complexity when planted in a vaunted terroir and raised respectfully. Fermented in cement like the Barbaresco and aged two years in Stockinger demi-muids, “Axilium” epitomizes the finesse for which Asili is known, offering dense, tightly reined-in red fruits, blossoming minerality, and a lengthy finish of impeccably rendered tannins. It should age effortlessly well into a second decade.

From a small parcel in the village of San Rocco Seno d’Elvio in Alba, Cascina Luisin produces a Langhe Nebbiolo which epitomizes their house style of finesse-inflected structured traditionalism. Fermented naturally in concrete and aged one year in large Stockinger casks, the “Maggiur” is pretty yet sternly mineral, with gently toothsome tannins and a bristling sense of energy underpinning its bright red fruits. (Note: the only thing preventing “Maggiur” from being labeled a Nebbiolo d’Alba is the fact that it is not bottled in San Rocco.)

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. 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.

The fabled Rabajà cru in Barbaresco, within which the Luisin winery itself is situated, borders Asili to the southwest, but the differences in character between the two are striking: Rabajà is brooding and earthy where Asili is bright and mineral, and Luisin’s version of Rabajà is arguably the more complex and long-lasting of the two, even if their Asili can be more winning (particularly in youth). As densely constructed and structurally imposing as this is, however, the fruit remains stunningly vibrant and pure—a testament to Roberto’s deeply felt and intuitive touch with extraction and tannin management.

This highly regarded cru in Barbaresco is prized for its finesse, which Luisin’s version provides in spades. Compared to its sibling “Rabajà”, the graceful, majestic “Asili” is amply structured but the structure feels more a matter of fact than a particular point of emphasis, and the overall impression is one of lifted, red-fruited elegance. The oft-articulated differences between Barbaresco and Barolo can sometimes be overstated, as cru character and (especially) grower style play exceedingly significant roles, but Luisin’s “Asili” could come from nowhere else but this zone.

Produced exclusively from old plantings in the Bas-Rabajà vineyard, after an astonishing 90-day submerged-cap fermentation, Luisin’s Barbaresco Riserva spends three and a half years in large Slavonian casks, which allows the wine—an even more powerfully structured voicing of Nebbiolo than their regular Rabajà, as befitting the cru’s character—to develop even greater depth and nuance, and while it certainly demands some patience, this is surprisingly expressive upon release.