Anti-Review: The Wine That Knows What It Is
The Setting
London, November. The kind of evening where no one has a particular plan beyond the meal and what is in the glass. Someone has brought a Brovia — the 2018 Rocche di Castiglione, which arrived with a reputation for being underestimated. The 2018 vintage in Barolo is not the year collectors reach for instinctively. It sits between the celebrated 2016 and the stellar 2019, and the assumption in many cellars is that it is the one to drink now while waiting for the others.
That assumption sells the 2018 short. And it particularly sells Rocche di Castiglione short.
The Wine as a Person
The Rocche di Castiglione cru sits on the eastern side of the Castiglione Falletto commune, southeast-facing, calcareous marl with sand — the geological middle position between Serralunga's hard limestone austerity and La Morra's softer generosity. Àlex Sanchez farms this vineyard with the precision of someone who has worked other soils and knows what makes this one different. The wine shows pinpoint precision, with small-berry nuances, wildflowers, and crushed stone. The mineral signature adds beautiful focus.
In the glass, the 2018 is immediately present. Not the assertiveness of a Serralunga wine, not the immediate charm of a La Morra — something between those registers, with an elegance that the year's warmth deepened rather than disrupted. Fragrant and focused, it opens with iris, forest berry, new leather and culinary spice, with juicy red cherry, spiced cranberry, and cinnamon before a savoury, almost salty close.
If it were a person arriving at that London table, it would be the one who is immediately interesting — not loud, not performing, simply someone whose presence changes the quality of the room. You notice them early and spend the rest of the evening glad they came.
You can almost feel the sandy soil in the soft tannins. This is not a tasting note. It is a description of what the vineyard communicates through the wine — the particular texture of Castiglione Falletto soil expressing itself in the drink's structure. The cru is named in the wine's character. The name on the label points to something real.
The Stoic Lesson
The 2018 vintage is sometimes handled as a concession — the wine you open when the 2016 and 2019 are too precious to touch. This is the wrong frame. Every year produces the wine it produces, and a producer with Àlex's precision and Elena's understanding of these specific rows makes something from a moderate vintage that a lesser estate could not make from a great one.
Drink from 2026 to 2038, the critics suggest. The wine is arriving at its best years now. Not the long cellar candidate that the 2016 represents, not the multi-decade proposition of a Vigna Rionda from a great vintage — this is a wine for the table in the near future, for the meal in progress, for the evening that deserves something precise and unhurried.
Àlex came to Castiglione Falletto from elsewhere, which means he arrived with the particular clarity of someone who chose this place rather than inherited it. The Rocche di Castiglione 2018 carries that quality — a wine made with the deliberate attention of someone who knows what this specific vineyard is capable of, and worked to achieve it even in a year the market was not watching as closely as it should have been.
The wine knows what it is. It is the cru, in a year, in a glass.
That is the whole story.
Pazienza is not waiting for time to pass; it is honouring time's work. // Arnt
Brovia Barolo Rocche di Castiglione 2018. Vineyard: southeast-facing calcareous marl with sand, Castiglione Falletto. Formerly labelled Rocche dei Brovia. Drink 2026–2038.
