Villero

Villero is another vineyard that in my view has a big presence in the Barolo region.  Not only is it quite large at just over 22 ha, it is fairly centrally located in the region. It is comprised of really quite a uniform and expansive south west facing slope, though sloping slightly more towards the west at each end. It looks like it should be a fine vineyard. Being very visible from much of the northern parts of Monforte, most of Barolo and the eastern slopes of La Morra, Villero acts as something of a landmark to those starting to get to know the region’s many vineyards. As importantly, many of the best known growers in the region own parcels in Villero.  So it is a wine quite often tasted when visiting cellars. It is thus a vineyard with both a physical prominence and one which produces a wine frequently sampled when visiting the region. 

It is also the vineyard that according to Alex Sanchez from Brovia produces a wine that is really very typical of all the qualities one looks for in a Barolo.  It is very “representative” of the wine of the region, with all a typical Barolo’s defining components present but none in excess. The aromatics are floral - violets and roses but also licorice and some minerality. There are balsamic notes also. The palate is full and quite firm, leading to sweet and round tannin with considerable presence. The vineyard has more compacted clay in its soil than most in Castiglione Falletto - and a good deal less sand - and there is no doubt it can get hot as it benefits from the full sun of the afternoon. The result is a wine almost always with a fully ripe presence in the mouth but which  can lean towards being overly round on the palate in the warmer years.  Normally yields are allowed to run up a bit so as to compensate for this ease of ripeness. The canopies are managed accordingly. Yet this is the wine’s personality. There will never be the greatest finesse. You don’t expect to be overwhelmed by elegance.

I know some - Greg dal Piaz for one, who I respect immensely - who find the wine a touch simple. Villero is a good wine from which to start one’s experience in learning Barolo knowing that there are more interesting vineyards in the MGA firmament to discover later. Villero is ‘easy” to understand. It is a good place to start the journey. “Training wheels wine” he calls it. Fair enough. But I don’t think Villero is therefore necessarily a simple wine. I don’t find it lacks identity merely because it has no distinguishing markers. The very absence of particular defining qualities allows Villero to serve as a benchmark in the sense that one can compare wines from other vineyards to those from Villero in a way that can be consistent and thus useful.

Others - notably Luca Currado from the Vietti winery - have said that Villero doesn’t easily give up its finest terroir, which accordingly does not fully present itself in the wine every year.  So they only bottle the wine separately in years where they feel the conditions were absolutely right - and they then find the wine needs longer than normal in barrels to develop these otherwise elusive distinctive qualities that define Villero’s beauty. Perhaps they feel in less climatically suitable years the wine from their particular parcel may not meet the highest expectations.  In these years they declassify it. Which is an indictment that commands some respect from someone who knows the vineyards of Barolo as well as Luca Currado. 

Yet to say the wine has no particular distinguishing features (in the same way, incidentally that the wines of Beaune are of representative of red Burgundy from the Cote de Beaune more broadly) nor reaches it heights of individual expression every year, is surely not to say the wine cannot frequently be wonderful and full of personality.  I am still feeling my way into an understanding of the vineyard, but I have always found Villero to present itself as a wine that lacks for nothing that would make me wish to drink less of it. And I have found it speaks quite strongly of where it came from, which I value in a wine. What is not to like ?