Comm. G.B. Burlotto Verduno Pelaverga 2021

Ratings

July 2, 2024

Love this wine. It's easy to confuse it with a warm Pinot Noir, but after all, it's not every day we drink Pelaverga, right? It boasts a beautiful bouquet of red fruits, forest floor, leather, flowers, dried herbs, strawberry jam, and a hint of wet wood. On the palate, it’s juicy with a touch of grip from ripe tannins. The long, delicious aftertaste features notes of damp forest floor, wet wood, red fruits, and spices. Elegant, sophisticated, and delicious. No need to hold onto this one—enjoy it now.

December 29, 2023

This wine boasts a beautiful bouquet filled with red fruits, forest floor, leather, flowers, and dried herbs. The palate is quite delicate yet well-balanced, offering a juicy experience with notes of wet wood, wet forest floor, ripe red fruits, and leather. It finishes with a long and delicious aftertaste, reflecting the wine's sophisticated nature. This wine's elegance and depth of flavor make it a truly refined choice.

September 6, 2023

I promised to this specific bottle to open it as the first wine of the evening. Maybe I own this Verduno Pelaverga after tasting it only in a (slightly) drunk state. So here I am.

A warm and beautiful bouquet of red fruits, forest floor, chocolate, flowers and dried herbs. The alcohol is here to warm you during rainy days, but the balance doesn't ruin delicacy completely. It still offers a juicy mouthfeel with notes of bark, wet leaves and ripe red fruits. The aftertaste is relatively long and more focused on a hot finish.

June 20, 2023

Same beauty and delicacy as before. Ripe dark fruits, cherries, flowers and dried herbs. Juicy and relatively light with a long and flavourful finish.

June 9, 2023

A nice and delicate Pelaverga despite the 14 abv. Ripe dark fruits, cherries, flowers and dried herbs. Juicy and relatively light with a long and flavourful finish.

About Producer

Burlotto: grace, memory, and the long maceration

Barolo has many great names. Some thunder. Some dazzle. And then there's Burlotto - a name that doesn't raise its voice but somehow speaks the loudest. You don't remember it because it impressed you. You remember it because it stayed with you.

It's not just the story. Though yes, the story is good.

In the mid-1800s, Comm. Giovan Battista Burlotto was already bottling his own Barolo when most producers were still selling in bulk. His wines reached the House of Savoy, won medals in Milan, and helped put Verduno - his quiet hilltop village - on the map. At a time when few talked about cru bottlings, Burlotto was already making Monvigliero as a single-vineyard wine. He saw something others didn't.

And then, for a while, the world stopped looking.

After Comm. Giovan Battista died in 1927, Burlotto faded. Verduno, too, slipped out of focus. While villages like Monforte and Serralunga chased structure and depth, Verduno stayed airy, subtle - too subtle, maybe, for a time that favoured extraction.

But Burlotto never left. And it never changed much either. The vineyards remained. The old ways too. When Fabio Alessandria, great-great-grandson of the founder, took the reins, he didn't start from scratch. He picked up where the story had paused.

And he listened.

Today, Verduno is no longer a secret. Its light touch, its lifted aromatics, its tension - these things have found a new audience. Sommeliers, collectors, and people chasing elegance rather than impact. And Burlotto is at the centre of it.

The wines feel like Verduno sounds: wind in the grass, old brick under the sun, someone talking softly but with conviction. They don't impose. They invite.

Monvigliero is the cru everyone now talks about. East-facing, pale soils, kissed by the Tanaro's cooling breath. Other producers treat it gently and aim for purity. Fabio does the opposite - foot-trodden whole clusters, 60 days of maceration, long ageing in large botti. It's a deeply traditional, almost forgotten way of working Nebbiolo. And yet the result is anything but heavy. It's not so much tasted as it is remembered.

But Burlotto doesn't begin and end with Monvigliero.

The Acclivi is a quiet triumph - a blend of top Verduno parcels. It isn't a second wine; it's a composite portrait. A memory of the village rather than a single voice.

Cannubi, the historic vineyard in Barolo proper - rendered by Fabio not with grandeur but with quiet precision. And now there's also Castelletto from Monforte: more austere, mineral, a deeper register - but still unmistakably Burlotto in tone and restraint.

The Barolo "normale" is often more open, and approachable in its youth. It doesn't have the same fame, but in the glass, it speaks the same dialect.

Outside of Barolo, the range stretches but never loses focus. The Pelaverga is the benchmark: peppery, herbal, and translucent. The Freisa is wild and structured. Barbera in two versions - one juicy, the other dark and coiled. Langhe Nebbiolo from Barolo vines, just with a lighter frame. Even the rosé, Elatis, and the Sauvignon Blancs somehow feel serious.

None of these wines are flashy. But all of them are exact.

Fabio doesn't chase trends. He works quietly, with conviction. Whole-cluster fermentation, long maceration, large oak, no barriques, low sulphur. These are not marketing points - they're tools. And they're used in service of wines that move.

You can talk about technique. You can get geeky if you want (and you should - these wines can take it). But that's not the point.

The point is that they feel like memory. Like something important, you didn't know you missed until you tasted it.

In a world often obsessed with form, Burlotto reminds you why you loved wine in the first place.

Quietly. Clearly. Completely.

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