Cantina Bartolo Mascarello

A lot has changed in the legendary wine-making region of Piemonte. Over the past two decades a new wave of producers has emerged in the region, revealing different personalities of the majestic nebbiolo grape. And to their credit, the modernists have made Barolo more approachable. However, Barolo is a wine of patience and, like the great wine-making regions of Europe, it possesses an ancient, glorious past that cannot be forgotten. There is a handful of gladiators who continue to protect this past way of life and resist all temptations to bow to commercial pressures. The use of long maceration (capello sommerso) and aging in large old barrels (botti) of local oak and chestnut are perfected, not disregarded. These true artisans are Piemonte’s greatest producers: Giacomo Conterno, Bruno Giacosa, and, most notably, Bartolo Mascarello. This great man who passed away in March, 2005 still has a cult following. 

Bartolo Mascarello, the great elder statesman of Barolo, spoke with the same candidness and fervor as the younger Angelo Gaja. However, for Bartolo the passion was for the preservation of Barolo’s historic past, which emphasizes the flavors of the local land rather than wood grown in Limousin, France or roto-fermentors designed Down Under. Until a few years before his death, this gentle man refused even to have a telephone in his office.

In many famous Barolo families, younger generations see their new responsibilities upon coming of age as a mandate for an opportunity to shake up their family’s image with new winemaking, new labels, new concepts.

But in a smaller number of famiglie, children view their role as stewards of a noble tradition, bound by heredity as well as conviction, to continue their parent’s important work. Such is the case with Maria Teresa Mascarello.

At the time of Bartolo’s death in March 2005, Maria Teresa had been de-facto winemaker for years, working under the guidance of her wheelchair-bound father and with Alessandro Bovio, Bartolo's winery assistant. She learned all of Bartolo’s secrets and completely absorbed his philosophy, just as Bartolo had a half-century earlier from his father Giulio, and he from his father Bartolomeo.

Bartolo's daughter, Maria Teresa, makes her wine the same way her father did 50 years ago, through techniques that go back centuries and which were inherited when he was an apprentice under his father, Giulio, one of the true icons of Barolo. Despite his owning vines on the prestigious Cannubi hilltop, Mascarello's wine is not a cru selection; it is a blend from Canubbi, San Lorenzo, Rue, and Rocche. The approach is simple: low yields and ripe fruit from Barolo’s best vines, blended for consistent quality and style. Like his father, he instilled these same values and techniques in the next generation, who now carries on the artisan’s craft and represents the future of Barolo’s Old School

Her entrance into the winery obviously began with faithfully applying the family’s traditional philosophy, which specifies lengthy macerations and patient smoothing out in large oak botti, and certainly not in the barriques of which her father is a declared enemy, going so far as to post his diatribes right on various bottle labels; but thanks to her fine, feminine sensitivity, she has already made a personal contribution by improving the aromatics and the crisp fruit of the wines, assisted in this process by gradually bringing in new ageing casks. For the Mascarello family maintain that tradition is never a mummified reality, but is constantly open to the new, but without ever burning the bridges to the past that brought us into the present.

The botti aging was fundamental to Bartolo’s approach, both enologically and philosophically; for him the modernist’s use of barrique banalized the character of Barolo, turning it into “a clown with rouged cheeks” and he famously espoused his opposition to their use—and to Italian right wing politics—with his “No Barrique, no Berlusconi” Barolo art label.

Perhaps most importantly he made just one blended Barolo despite having holdings in such prestigious crus as Canubbi and Rocche di La Morra. This is perhaps the most traditional aspect of the Bartolo Mascarello philosophy: the belief that the most balanced, complete Barolo is crafted from the varying qualities of different sites.

Bartolo explained why he still used this method to writer Nick Belfrage: “I may be the last of the Mohicans, but my customers appreciate that I still make my wine as the land dictates. A single site does not necessarily come good every year—especially in dry years—and Barolo to be consistently good needs the mutually compensating characteristics of different vineyards.”

She is just as exacting in her view of what Barolo should be as her father was. As she told Antonio Galloni, “The idea of a perfect wine doesn’t exist. I am trying to make an honest wine, one that reflects all of the qualities of our territory, both its strengths as well as its flaws. There are only a few sites that can really give expressive wines. Our ancestors used to look at the hills in the winter, and where the snow melted first, they planted Nebbiolo. Today Nebbiolo is planted everywhere.”

In keeping with this idea, Maria Teresa’s Barolo comes exclusively from the hearts of the same four time-honored Nebbiolo sites as her father’s Barolo: Canubbi, San Lorenzo and Rué—all in the commune of Barolo—and Rocche in the commune of La Morra.

Her Barbera and Dolcetto come from sections of San Lorenzo and Rué, respectively, that are less suitable for Nebbiolo. Dolcetto is also planted in Monrobiolo di Bussia, also in the commune of Barolo. The Barbera and Dolcetto are both classic examples—vibrant, juicy and utterly Piemontese.

Maria Teresa has not only held fast to her ancestors’ traditions, she’s taken the wines of Cantina Bartolo Mascarello to even greater heights, imbuing them with more refined aromatics and elegance across the range, giving traditional Piedmont enthusiasts much to look forward to in the coming