Story #8 - The Nebbiolo You Think You Know

There are wines you can buy by category. And there are wines you must buy by conviction.

Nebbiolo belongs to the second group. Because Nebbiolo, as I know it, is rarely the Nebbiolo people expect when they reach for a “traditional Barolo”. Not worse — just different. Sometimes untouched by the movement that quietly rewired the region from within.

In Barolo, the name is not the answer. It’s the beginning of a conversation — one that feels, at times, as demanding and as rewarding as Burgundy.

So what should Nebbiolo be?

For me, Nebbiolo is an elegant red. Not heavy. Not loud. I look for round edges, a lifted perfume, and a kind of quiet precision — the same finesse that makes great Burgundy so compelling. Nebbiolo can be intense, but it should never feel brutal.

And that brings me to what defines it most clearly in my glass. Not a rating. Not a story. Three decisions: the vineyard, the cellar, and the experience. Because with Nebbiolo, you don’t shape elegance by force. You protect it.

Great — and simply delicious — Nebbiolo doesn’t only live inside the famous borders of Barolo and Barbaresco. And this is where Langhe Nebbiolo becomes one of the most rewarding entry points. It’s often the more approachable expression: made to be enjoyed earlier, shaped with less time in oak, and freed from the expectation that you need to “study” it before you open the bottle. In the best cases, it delivers the perfume and the line of Nebbiolo, but with a lighter frame — a red you can drink for pleasure, in a casual moment, without turning it into a ceremony.

The cellar
The cellar often gets more attention than it deserves. We love simple categories: traditional Barolo equals large botti, modern Barolo equals 228-litre barriques. But that shorthand misses the point, because the real philosophy of Nebbiolo starts earlier — in the vineyard. Higher planting density, lower yields, cleaner farming, more precision: many of the things people call “modern” are decisions made long before a barrel is even chosen. And once the work in the vineyard is coherent, the oak regime becomes less a badge of ideology and more a tool. A barrique isn’t automatically modern, and a botte isn’t automatically traditional. What matters is whether the choices in the cellar make sense as a continuation of the choices in the vineyard — whether the wood serves the fruit, not the other way around.

The experience
People often describe Barolo as uncompromising: structured, tannic, built only for patience. And yes — it can be. But once you’ve seen how much is decided in the vineyard and how those decisions are echoed in the cellar, you realise the experience of Barolo is not fixed. It’s chosen.

Nebbiolo’s typicity has to be preserved: the high tannins, the high acidity, that unmistakable inner tension. But these traits shouldn’t be amplified to the point where they dominate the wine — where tannin and acidity stick out so much that the experience becomes work. When everything matches — farming, intent, élevage — Barolo can be both age-worthy and readable; intense, yet not punishing. And even if the choice is to open the bottle young, that shouldn’t mean compromise. If vineyard and cellar are coherent, the wine can still deliver a great experience at a youthful stage: clear, balanced, and complete, with structure present but integrated — not a headline, just part of the harmony.

For me, that’s why setting expectations matters — and why it should be done from the start. If you want to drink Nebbiolo today, the most honest choice is often Langhe Nebbiolo — ideally from a Barolo producer, because you get the grape and the hands, without the weight of a wine that was built to wait. And if you come from Burgundy and you want “Barolo today”, I’d often look the other way: a Langhe Nebbiolo from a Barbaresco producer can deliver that lifted perfume and line with a little more ease and immediacy.

When the benchmark rises — when you start thinking in terms of a higher-ranked site, something like a Premier Cru in Burgundy — then a commune Barolo, or a single-vineyard Barolo, becomes the fairer comparison. Not because it’s automatically “better”, but because the ambition, the structure, and the depth are closer to what you’re putting it against.

So the question for me is not modern versus classic. The question is: who is behind the decisions — in the vineyard, in the cellar, and in the timing of release — and do they set the expectations honestly? Because with Nebbiolo, the best producers don’t sell a category. They sell clarity.