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Boris· @Antonina H
Tasting Notes(2)
4.0
They've taken Barolo, added sugar, grappa, and aromatic herbs, and produced something that lands somewhere between sweet vermouth and Campari. Apparently 85% wine, 15% bitter herbs liquor made specifically for Chinato. The result is gloriously strange. Nose of tonic water, wormwood, citrus peel, dried cherry, pomegranate - even hints of curry and bell pepper lurking in there. On the palate: medium-full body, definite alcohol punch, bitter and long. Sour rhubarb notes, cloves, herbal bitterness. Sweet but not cloying, with just enough acidity to keep it honest. The key ingredient here - chill it. Dangerous stuff - far too easy to drink faster than you should.
About
Barolo Chinato is a Piedmontese aromatised and lightly-fortified wine: Barolo DOCG as the base, infused with cinchona bark (china calissaia, the source of quinine) and a closely-held mix of botanicals - typically rhubarb root, gentian, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, bitter orange peel, nutmeg - then sweetened with sugar. The recipe was perfected around 1870 by Giuseppe Cappellano, a pharmacist of Serralunga d'Alba with a shop in Turin, and originally marketed as a medicinal digestif and anti-malarial tonic. Chinato emerged later than Italy's other aromatised wines (vermouth arrived in Turin in 1786, fernet a few decades after) because cinchona bark first had to make its way from South America into European pharmacies.
Distilleria Montanaro sits in Gallo d'Alba, in the Langhe. Founded in 1885 by Francesco Trussoni as a maker of Grappa di Barolo, taken over by the Montanaro family in 1922; the house's Chinato follows a recipe attributed to Dr. Montanaro himself. The method is the standard one: about 30 botanicals macerated in neutral grape spirit for around 30 days, blended into Barolo DOCG, rested 5-6 weeks in steel before bottling. Final ABV around 16.5%. The drinking moment is post-meal - Italian tradition pairs Barolo Chinato with dark chocolate, and the bittering quinine register against cocoa is what the recipe was built for.