Bartolo Mascarello 1955 to…from Magnum

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | JULY 06, 2023

When it came time to decide on the Rare Wine Dinner for La Festa del Barolo in 2023, the year of our tenth anniversary, there was only one choice. Bartolo Mascarello was the first grower I met in Piedmont. Mascarello spent several hours with me that afternoon in a wide-ranging discussion that touched on politics, culture and, eventually, wine. It was an important moment, a moment in which I began to understand that the wines I loved so much were deeply shaped by the people who crafted them.

Bartolo Mascarello’s office, pretty much as it always was.

A Personal Journey

I arrived at Mascarello’s front door by accident. It was a sunny Saturday during the summer of 2000. I was looking for Mauro Mascarello, whose wines I often drank in those days, but I called the wrong number and ended up at Via Roma in Barolo. In the blink of an eye, an entire afternoon flew by in Mascarello’s cramped office, but not before several bottles had been emptied and countless stories shared. I suppose it was destiny.

A few months before that fateful first meeting, I had a bottle of Mascarello’s 1982 Barolo, picked off a list at a small restaurant in Mantova for next to nothing. You could do that back then. It was a magical wine that was further fueled by a growing interest in Barolo. Three years later, I moved to Italy for work. The Mascarello cellar was a frequent stop, as I took every opportunity I could to escape the drudgery of corporate life in Milan. Mascarello was always behind his desk, designing labels and reading everything he could get his hands on. A bout with myeloradiculitis (a neurological virus that affects the lower limbs) had left Mascarello in a wheelchair many years before, yet his spirits were always high. Mascarello was incredibly generous with his time. I think he simply enjoyed chatting with a young American kid interested in Barolo.

A stunning flight of wines from the 1980s, including the 1982, the wine that got me hooked on Bartolo Mascarello Barolo.

It was a very different time for Piedmont and Italian wine in general. The local press was enamored with the younger generation of producers, those who made what were then called ‘modern’ wines. Meanwhile, Mascarello, his cousin Beppe Rinaldi, Baldo Cappellano, Mauro Mascarello and Giovanni Conterno, among other more traditional producers, were completely ignored. Among his peers, only Bruno Giacosa had somewhat of a profile. The market was completely different. With one or two exceptions, every producer struggled to sell their wines. The curious oenophile could visit pretty much any winery and buy whatever they desired in quantity. There were no such things as allocations. Wineries often had several vintages to sell at any given time, something that was the norm up until 10-15 years ago, no more than that.

Some of the artist labels Bartolo Mascarello designed. Typically each case includes one bottle with an artist label.

A Brief History

The Mascarello family is originally from the Torriglione hamlet in La Morra. Giulio Mascarello founded Cantina Mascarello in 1919 and began bottling wines shortly after that, partly in demijohn and partly in bottle. The oldest remaining bottles at the winery date back to 1926 and 1929, the birth years of Giulio Mascarello’s son, Bartolo, and his wife, Franca Brezza.