2019 Barolo Riserva Monfortino

Roberto Conterno has built an impressive empire in the 20 or so years that he has been fully in charge of his family’s winery. I remember the days when it was a one-man show. Back then, Conterno pretty much did it all himself, including answering the phone. Making great wine is hard enough, but Conterno has proven to be equally skilled at the entrepreneurial side of running a business that continues to grow with the acquisition of vineyards, the purchase of Nervi winery in Gattinara and peripheral businesses in glassware and automated tractors for viticulture. During my November visit, much of the local buzz centered on Conterno’s Belsit in Langa restaurant, the new incarnation of Ristorante Bovio, which was in a sort of soft opening at the time. I did have a very good meal there, but it’s too early in the restaurant’s life to be able to offer a reliable assessment. One thing that did strike me, though, was Conterno’s desire to champion the wines of many producers, not just his own, at far more accessible prices than what has become the norm at many other restaurants in the region. Hopefully that will prove to be a sustainable business model.

As for the wines, readers will find two magnificent vintages in 2021 and 2020. I imagine these Barolos will go neck-and-neck over the coming years and decades. The 2021s are a bit more vibrant and focused, while the 2020s are a touch more open, without veering into excessive opulence. Simply put, Conterno has very few peers when it comes to exceptionally high quality and consistency.

Conterno fans will find a lot to like in the 2020 Barolos. For starters, Conterno bottled all his single-vineyard Barolos and Monfortino, which means readers will be able to compare all the wines, something that has not always been possible in recent years, in vintages where Conterno has chosen to just make Monfortino, or no Monfortino at all. One of the recent changes here has been a decision to shorten time in cask by a year for the Barolos. “At a certain point, we noticed the wines weren’t gaining anything by spending an additional year in cask,” Conterno told me. Given its longer aging, time in wood for Monfortino is more of vintage-by-vintage decision, although, here, too, the general trend is also to give the wine less time in cask. In other news, Conterno recently announced his acquisition of Ristorante Bovio in La Morra. Ristorante Bovio is one of the most loved restaurants in the region. It will be interesting to see what things look like when the restaurant re-opens (with a new name) in a few months’ time. In my view, there is no stronger message a producer can send than investing in their own region.

Leave it to Roberto Conterno to be two steps ahead of the game. If his new winery at Nervi, new wine glasses and state-of-the-art investments at both Conterno and Nervi were not enough, Conterno recently launched a new tractor designed to automate several important operations in the vineyard, but not the harvest. At least not yet, he says with a smile. Conterno sees a shortage of labor as the biggest threat to long-term stability for wineries and sets out to do something about it. Even with all of these various projects, the wines remain absolute benchmarks. Readers will note that the Barolo Cerretta is, unusually, already in bottle. Conterno told me he may shorten time in cask for all his Barolos, as he is starting to believe today’s wines don’t necessarily benefit from the last year in wood. So, if the Cerretta is in bottle, what about the Francia and Arione? Savvy readers will deduce that those wines were all blended into the Monfortino. In other words, there are only two Barolos from Conterno in 2019, Cerretta and Monfortino. Harvest took place during the second and third weeks of October, which is quite late for the year and in line with vintages such as 2013 and 2014. The young 2019s possess striking fruit supported by potent tannins nearly buried beneath all of that intensity. I won’t be surprised if both wines turn out even better in time than these notes suggest.