The Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove
Anti-Review: Giuseppe Rinaldi Tre Tine 2018
The 2018 vintage in Barolo has a reputation for charm.
Warm, dry, generous—the kind of year that produces wines you can approach early, wines that offer immediate pleasure without demanding that you earn it. Critics praised its accessibility. Merchants moved it quickly. New collectors, intimidated by the austerity of great Barolo, felt welcomed.
The Tre Tine 2018 is not that wine.
Or rather—it is that wine, but only at first glance. Step closer, and you find something more complicated. More honest. More interesting.
We open it on a Tuesday evening with no particular occasion—just the quiet conviction that good wine does not need ceremony to justify itself, only attention.
The color is bright garnet, already showing the faintest copper at the rim—a Nebbiolo signature, that willingness to begin aging transparently, visibly, without pretense. The nose is immediate in a way the Bartolo Mascarello 2019 never was: dried roses, sweet spice, a shadow of cedar, something that registers as both old wood and fresh earth at the same moment.
It is approachable. And then the tannins arrive.
They are not aggressive. They do not announce themselves with the full-bodied assault that lesser Nebbiolos can produce in youth. They are more precise than that—fine-grained, insistent, running along the edges of the palate with a quiet authority that changes the entire conversation. The fruit recedes slightly. The structure steps forward. And you realize: this wine has been waiting for you to stop thinking about the vintage and start thinking about what it is actually saying.
What it says is this: I will not be defined by my year.
The Tre Tine is a blend of three sites: Brunate-adjacent Le Coste, the storied Cannubi San Lorenzo, and Ravera in Novello. In 2018, with the summer's warmth threatening to push ripeness too far, the Rinaldi harvest team made a decision that speaks volumes about their philosophy—they picked Le Coste and Cannubi San Lorenzo early, starting September 13, unusual for Nebbiolo, which typically holds on into October.
They chose structure over ripeness.
Freshness over flattery.
This is the iron fist beneath the velvet. The 2018 growing season wanted to make a generous, full-bodied wine. The winemaker wanted to make a Rinaldi wine. The early harvest is where those two ambitions negotiated their terms.
The result is a Barolo that carries the warmth of the vintage in its mid-palate—that silkiness, that generosity of texture—while preserving the spine of acidity and the grip of tannin that define the estate's house character.
It is, as Antonio Galloni noted, "austere and taut, built on energy and tension more than primary fruit"—a wine that "reminds you of a wine Beppe Rinaldi might have made".
This is the highest compliment possible. It means the daughter has not merely continued the work. She has absorbed its spirit.
In my former life building brands, I understood the temptation of the accessible vintage. The warm year that produces wines people love immediately. The product that removes all friction from the experience, that delivers gratification before the customer has even decided if they were paying attention.
Easy. Profitable. Forgettable.
The Tre Tine 2018 refuses that bargain. It takes the generous raw material of a celebrated year and applies to it the same discipline, the same long maceration, the same large neutral oak, the same refusal to harvest late just because the market prefers ripeness—that defines every bottle this family has ever made.
It is not better than its vintage. It is better than its temptations.
And that, in wine and in life, is the harder achievement.
The finish is long—persistent, spiced, with a thread of dried cherry and something mineral that carries through long after the glass is empty. It settles into you slowly, the way good conversation does, the kind where you realize ten minutes after it ends that the most important thing was said quietly, in passing, and you almost missed it.
Drink it now, and you will find a wine of real distinction.
Wait ten years, and you will find what Marta Rinaldi was actually building.
The iron will still be there. But by then, you'll understand why it had to be.
Integrity is the refusal to be rushed.
// AC
