The 2016 Barbaresco Masseria is without question one of the wines of the vintage. Powerful and explosive with stunning lift, the 2016 is just gorgeous. Dried flowers, mint, blood orange, red cherry and chalk infuse the 2016 with striking layers of nuance, but it is the wine's balance and total sense of harmony that leave the deepest impression. Vivid, powerful and wonderfully alive in the glass, the Masseria will thrill readers lucky enough to own it. The 2016 is such a stunning wine. The Masseria is a blend of several sites built around a core of fruit from Giaccone, in Treiso, along with Pora and Faset, both in Barbaresco. All I can say is: Wow!

Showing beautiful results in an excellent vintage, the 2016 Chianti Classico Riserva is a graceful and elegantly tempered red wine. It makes good on all the basic promises of traditional Sangiovese: the complexity and elegance of the grape and that fresh acidity. It opens to a mid-weight style, making this a perfect wine for roast chicken and roast potatoes. Pretty mineral notes appear on the close, and the tannin is beautifully integrated. Some 22,000 bottles were made. 

I'm loving the new label designs of these wines from Badia a Coltibuono.

The 2016 Barolo Ravera is bursting with all of the tension that is the most singular characteristic of this site. Freshly cut flowers, white pepper and mint lend energy to a wine that is very shy and tightly wound today. Then again, it is Ravera. Macerated dark cherry, lavender, mint, crushed rocks and sage race out of the glass in a potent, stunning Barolo endowed with magnificent purity and translucency. The 2010 is quite simply a stunning, breathtaking wine. Don't miss it.

Made entirely with Sangiovese, this has aromas of mature black-skinned fruit, exotic spice, camphor and whiffs of French oak. Firmly structured but elegant, the linear palate delivers Marasca cherry, red plum, espresso and licorice framed in tightly knit, fine-grained tannins. Bright acidity keeps it fresh and balanced. Drink 2022–2028. 

Giacomo Neri and his family have crafted a wine that impresses from the first sip forward. Blackberry, plum and summer cherry are slowly folded into lasting flavors of spice, leather and beautiful balsam or medical herb. These are always a distinctive signature of this estate. The aromas flow with seamless transitions, and that fluid and ever-changing nature of the bouquet is what helps to build intensity and staying power. Pretty mineral accents appear as the wine takes on more air in the glass. What stands out most in this Brunello is the quality of the bouquet that is rigid and firm, yet not excessively so. You feel the structural texture of the wine as it sits firmly over the palate, yet there is mobility and softness to its many moving parts. I tasted this wine at various intervals over a 24-hour period. 

I love the tension and the glossy elegance here. The 2013 Barbaresco Riserva Camp Gros Martinenga is silky, bright and buoyant. It is complete and shows a lot of depth. It offers fresh acidity, and while it has a lean approach, it definitely has impressive length. This wine should evolve nicely over the next 10-20 years.

-Monica Larner

The 2016 Barolo Rocche di Castiglione is rich, sumptuous and elegant. Light on its feet yet also wonderfully deep and nuanced, the 2016 possesses off-the-charts resonance, energy and aromatic intensity. All the elements come together in a profoundly expressive Barolo endowed with tremendous class and pedigree. Ample, creamy and explosive, this is a wine of textural resonance and pure power.

The 2016 Barolo Brunate is a powerful, vertical wine endowed with tremendous explosive energy and intensity. Crushed flowers, mint, spice and dried flowers open up in the glass, but it is the wine's energy that really elevates it into the stratosphere. In the glass, the 2016 is dark, somber and full of the sepia-toned nuances that are such signatures of this great Barolo vineyard. This is the first vintage that includes Vietti's newest parcel in Brunate. Perhaps more importantly, though, the 2016 is the first vintage in which French oak is minimal. This is a stunning vintage for the Brunate