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Unfortunately for us, Ca’ del Baio is no longer the best-kept secret in Barbaresco it once was. The news, thanks to their rave reviews, the annual visits of the PRIMA gang and the profiling of the Grasso sisters in Suzanne Hoffman’s excellent book ‘Labor of Love,’ is definitely out! But, no matter, the Grassos are still some of the nicest people in all of the Langhe and their wines among the region’s most compelling. With four generations of family knowhow and over 30 vintages behind it, Ca’ del Baio is no Johnny-come-lately to the Barbaresco scene, and with holdings in vineyards like Asili and Pora in the Barbaresco zone and a wonderful spot on the backside of Vallegrande in Treiso, the current generations of the Grasso family, Giulio, Luciana and their three savvy daughters, are important landholders and winemakers, no matter how you look at it. The family home and cellar are in the tiny hamlet of Treiso, the smallest and least-visited of the three major Barbaresco villages, and the easiest to miss if you’re driving through the area. The vineyards that fan out from this little town are vertiginous in the extreme and only sparsely covered with the kind of sandy, marly soils that create the most structured, longest lived Nebbiolos in the entire Barbaresco zone. If you step outside the Grassos’ stylish new tasting area and look up their steep driveway, the breathtaking slope that rises in front of you is the family’s home vineyard of Vallegrande. It provides the fruit for one of their two single-vineyard bottlings (and a Riserva)- a dense, intense but elegant wine built on a core of wild strawberries and plums with Treiso’s textbook cooler climate elegance and crisp, lithe tannins. It’s a wine that shows why Barbaresco is often called the more ‘feminine’ of the three major Nebbiolo production zones. The Grasso’s other major vineyard holding is on the other side of the hill near Barbaresco village on the famous Asili hill. The Asili cru has been the source for some of Barbaresco’s most iconic wines over the years and brings together all of the attributes for which this area is so well known. Once upon a time, the Grassos sold their production of Asili to the Produttori del Barbaresco, the area’s well-known cooperative, where it consistently earned the highest marks for the the fruit’s ripeness parameters and quality. Produttori’s loss is our gain! The torrid 2022 vintage was dry and hot, producing wines that were more powerful and extracted than just about any we’ve seen from Barbaresco. But rather than tightly wound and tannic, they are surprisingly fun to drink and ebullient of personality. The 2022 Barbaresco Asili is a wine of immense pedigree, verve and potential longevity. Richer in texture than the Vallegrande right now, it’s a wine that will reveal its many charms not only now but also slowly over the next decade or so while also exuding the Burgundy-like elegance very unique to the site. What a great Asili! By the way, Paula Grasso (pictured second from the left, next to my wife Anne) is the oldest of the three sisters and married to our good friend Carlo Deltetto of Deltetto in Roero’s Canale whose wines PRIMA used to directly import. Valentina, the youngest, is married to the best butcher in the area, a fact not lost on us when we visit Ca’ del Baio for lunch!

Decanter, 94 points: Lovely fragrances of cinnamon, nutmeg, red cherry and lilac introduce the wine, with transparency and freshness which overflows onto the palate. It sports quite a serious backbone of dry, chalky tannins with supple fruit to smooth out the edges. Balanced and flavourful, it has appetising savoury length. Produced since 1988, when the family stopped supplying grapes to the Produttori del Barbaresco. As there will be no Riserva bottling in 2022, the old 1957 plantings are blended here. 

Vinous, 93 points: The 2022 Barbaresco Asili is a rich, heady wine from Ca' del Baio. Kirsch, blood orange, mint, cinnamon and a kick of orange peel open in the glass. The more exuberant side of the year comes through in racy Barbaresco that is decidedly on the riper side, but all the elements are very nicely balanced. There's just a touch of alcoholic warmth here.