2020 Cantina del Pino, Barbaresco

Cantina del Pino is an outstanding traditional estate led by the Vacca family who have deep roots in Barbaresco. Renato Vacca was remarkable, passionate, driven, and seemed to bleed Barbaresco wine. We’ve always admired his unique ability to craft incredibly true, transparent wines and of course the incredible value they represent. For his Barbaresco ‘normale’ bottling, Renato would gently vinify separately his different micro-plots of Ovello, Gallina, Albesani, and Starderi, age them for a year, and then decide how to blend them in larger casks before bottling a year later. The diversity of his small plots with different exposures and the individual ferments by parcel allowed him to make an incredibly balanced, consistent, dialed-in normale year after year. The 2020 Barbaresco is an outstanding example of Renato’s tremendous normale bottling.  A very representative wine of this particularly alluring 2020 vintage, it’s a joy to drink now and age over the next 5 or 6 years.