Nebbiolo d’Alba is too often an afterthought—produced from young vines, served by-the-glass, and quickly set aside so that the serious work of drinking Barolo can begin. Penna Currado’s San Sebastiano 2023 is the opposite. It doesn’t lead to Barolo; it replaces it.
 
Luca Currado spent decades making some of the Langhe’s most sought-after Barolos (Check out our Flatiron Guide to Barolo)  at Vietti; with Cascina Penna Currado he and his wife Elena Penna set out to explore Nebbiolo’s elegance on its own terms, without the long élevage required by the laws of DOCG Barolo. The vision was to work with the same great grapes, grown in the same legendary hills, but to give them a different destination.

The fruit for today’s wine – the inaugural release – comes from a single vineyard in the iconic Barolo village of Monforte d’Alba. Wrapped around a small chapel devoted to Saint Sebastian, it enjoys south, east, and west exposures. With 65+ year old vines, this is material that could easily become excellent Barolo!

And in the winery it starts out much like traditional Barolo: there is a five day cold soak, around 15 days of gentle fermentation, then an old-school submerged-cap maceration (around 24 days, so pretty long, but not Bartolo Mascarello long).

But then the path diverges from the one that leads to Barolo. The wine ages in oak casks for just 12 months, not the 18 required by the DOCG. It was bottled in spring, and released now, roughly two years before any Barolo from the same vintage.

The result is breathtakingly elegant Nebbiolo: raspberry, cherry, wild strawberry, roses and violets in a seamless line of silk and brightness, with none of the youthful austerity you brace for in Barolo.

This is wine that does an incredible job of conveying the sheer beauty of top-terroir Nebbiolo. It makes us wish that more producers would follow this divergent path, opening up what seems to us like a potentially whole new world of Nebbiolo:  

Cascina Penna Currado, Nebbiolo d'Alba San Sebastiano, 2023 $59.99