Barbaresco, “Rombone”

The family rents a two-and-a-half-hectare parcel of 30-year-old Nebbiolo in the renowned Barbaresco cru of Rombone in Treiso—coincidentally, just adjacent to the holdings there of our other new partner in the Langhe, Ada Nada, near the summit of the slope at around 300 meters altitude. Their version of this cru spends 18 months in a single enormous 85-hectoliter oak cask, plus an additional year resting in bottle, before its release. The wine is gorgeous, showing the exceptionally refined touch that Dante and Francesco have brought to the Oddero operation—one which expresses the estate’s traditional sensibility through an exceptionally and instinctively sensitive lens. The pure, luscious strawberry fruit possesses a sense of coolness, and the palate reflects the vintage’s tannic nature in a true but well-judged manner—appropriately firmly structured, but without being hard or mean.