2020 Bruna Grimaldi Badarina Barolo

Until 1999, this family sold their wine by the liter. Giacomo Grimaldi started it, his brother Giovanni ran it, and for decades the Barolo they made went out the door in bulk to anyone who showed up with a jug. Then Giovanni's daughter Bruna and her husband Franco decided to bottle it themselves. Their first labeled vintage was 1999. Bruna is now considered the reference producer for the vineyard on this label.

Badarina sits at the southernmost tip of Serralunga d'Alba, an amphitheater facing east and south at 450 meters. That combination of height and position means the Nebbiolo here ripens later than almost anywhere else in the commune, and Serralunga is already the slowest, most structured corner of Barolo. The ground underneath is white marl heavy with limestone, clay, and layers of sandstone, laid down about fifteen million years ago.

Inside Badarina sits a plot called Vigna Regnola, one of the few sites in the entire Barolo DOCG with its own officially recognized vineyard name. It is always vinified separately. In the years the family does not bottle it on its own as a Riserva, all of it goes into this wine.

Everything is hand-selected, each lot picked separately, macerated 25 to 35 days under a submerged cap, then aged two to two and a half years in large Slavonian oak.