Barolo del Comune di Serralunga d'Alba

This is the commune bottling: a Barolo from Luigi Baudana drawn from across Serralunga d'Alba rather than from one named site - a return to the older practice of blending sites of different exposure, altitude and soil rather than isolating a single cru. The fruit is from the younger plantings, dated to 1990, in the Cerretta and Baudana crus, joined more recently by a small parcel in Costabella next to Baudana.

The three sites are not the same rock, which is the point of blending them. Cerretta faces south-east on the Formazione di Lequio soils typical of Serralunga, over a substrate of iron-rich clay; Baudana faces south-west and mixes some Lequio with the Sant'Agata Fossili soils more usually associated with La Morra and Barolo; Costabella, south to south-east, sits more purely on Sant'Agata. Depending on the year parts of the three are co-fermented. Fermentation is spontaneous in open-top wood vats with macerations of twenty to twenty-five days, then ageing in Slavonian oak botti and further time in bottle. Farming is certified under SQNPI, Italy's national integrated-production standard - which is not the same thing as organic, though the estate's US importer describes the farming as organic certified from the 2019 vintage.

The Consorzio's 2020 harvest report concluded that the vintage "can be said to be extremely good with areas of excellence, especially for the medium-long ageing wines". Veraison for Nebbiolo fell between the beginning and the middle of August, then a drop in temperature briefly slowed ripening before it restarted through the second half of September, the grapes reaching maturity between the end of September and early October; neither the Nebbiolo nor the Barbera suffered the acidity losses typical of short-cycle and hotter vintages.

100% Nebbiolo at 14%, bottled July 2023, with 0.7 g/L of residual sugar.