Barolo Lazzarito Vietti 2020

The Winery

Winemakers for four generations, the Vietti family saw their winery founded by Carlo Vietti in the late 19th century in the municipality of Castiglione Falletto, in the Langhe region. In the early 1900s, his son Mario began selling the Barolo wines they had started producing. From the 1960s onwards, his daughter Lucia, together with her husband—the oenologist Alfredo Currado—carried on the work of the Vietti winery. Alfredo was the first to vinify individual vineyards separately.

In the 1960s, Barolo was not typically viewed as a single-vineyard or “cru” wine; rather, it was traditionally produced by vinifying grapes from all the vineyards together.

Another of Alfredo’s great pioneering visions was to champion Arneis, an indigenous grape variety that had long been overlooked by local producers. The winery began vinifying it as a single-varietal wine—a practice later adopted by other producers—thereby establishing Arneis today as the region’s most important white grape variety.

Today, Vietti is considered one of the greatest “semi-traditional” Barolo producers, making masterful use of both large casks and barriques.

Vinification

Vietti Barolo Lazzarito 2020. Sourced from the single Lazzarito vineyard in Serralunga d’Alba, featuring 4,500 vines per hectare with an average age of 35 years.
Lazzarito is a magnificent southwest-facing natural amphitheater with calcareous-clay soil. It covers an area of ​​1.7 hectares.

Yield is 20 hectoliters per hectare. Pre-fermentation cold maceration lasts for 72 hours. Alcoholic fermentation takes place over 28 days in open-top steel tanks at temperatures between 28°C and 34°C, involving two to three daily punch-downs (*fungature*), one *délestage* per day, and two aerated pump-overs.

Malolactic fermentation occurs in barriques, accompanied by *bâtonnage* (lees stirring). Aging

After 4 months of aging in barriques, it spends another 32 months in Slavonian oak casks.

Description

Intense garnet-red color. Extremely round, with a robust yet velvety structure; intense aroma with notes of figs and plums. Elegant, with soft, sweet tannins. Long finish.