$44.99 with shipping included on 4 bottles or more

The name Palladino needs no introduction here at PRIMA as it was the source of our best-selling Barbera d’Alba for many years. Their Barolos, though, are much rarer as very few cases actually make their way to the United States, and they are, after all, a very small, very artisanal producer. With a cellar right in the square of the town of Serralunga d’Alba, for such a small winery, they’re sort of hard to miss. Two generations of the Palladino family run the estate following tradition and fashioning wines that might seem old fashioned to some but youthful and expressive to those who have been around long enough to compare. Their production is exclusively estate-grown from the several vineyards they farm near the cantina. The classically-styled Barolo dei Comune di Serralunga is sourced from Palladino family holdings in the connecting Parafada (pictured on the right) and Gabutti MGAs just north of the Serralunga castle, Ornato, the well-loved MGA bordering Vignarionda and San Bernadino, also the site of the family’s Riserva bottling, a vineyard that slopes down at the southern end of the village. These are all wonderful, historic sites known for producing wines of noble austerity but mostly without the hardness or brittle tannins possible in some Serralunga vineyards. Aged only in large wood, it’s an old school rendition of a Serralunga Barolo that, in 2020, brings forth a mouthful of beautifully lifted cedar-infused cherry balsamico notes with fig, cinnamon, wild herb and dry earth notes contributing to a surprisingly svelte, polished, warm palate. The vintage has always impressed us for its freshness relative to the boldness of the fruit and we’ve been watching the progress of this 2020 for several years since it first arrived in the winter of 2024, and a check-in with dinner the other night was so delicious, I went back to the importer and bought all that was left! Despite its precocious aromatics (which, if anything, are even more pronounced), back then it was a big, bold statement of Serralunga Barolo- beefy and burly on the palate with some fierce tannins bringing up the rear. Revisiting the wine now, it has become a wonderful example of why waiting- even a little bit- for Barolo is a most rewarding proposition. Those once-fierce, edgy tannins are now a lot tamer, a lot rounder and more pliant. While the word ‘elegant’ is not quite the word I’d use yet, ‘suave’ maybe is. In fact, those of you who went deep on the 2020s from other producers and regions should take a moment and try a few. There is a lot of 2000 in their DNA, I think. Thanks to the importer’s impending closure, we were able to glom onto the last few cases at an excellent price, $15 a bottle less than we sold the 2019!