More about Giacomo Borgogno & Figli

Borgogno is one of Barolo's oldest houses and one of its most patient: for a century it has set aside bottles from its best vintages to age for decades in its own cellars, so that the wines can be tasted as they were meant to be.

Bartolomeo Borgogno founded the estate in the village of Barolo in 1761, and its wine was poured at the lunch celebrating the unification of Italy in 1861. In the 1920s Cesare Borgogno expanded exports and started the practice of holding back wine. The family ran Borgogno for nearly 250 years; in 2008 it was bought by the Farinetti family, founders of Eataly, and Andrea Farinetti has run it since soon after. He returned the cellar to fermentation in concrete with native yeasts, and the vineyards, including parcels in the Cannubi, Liste and Fossati crus, have been certified organic since the 2019 harvest.

The style is resolutely classic: long macerations and years in large Slavonian oak casks. Borgogno also makes one of Piedmont's benchmark Barolo Chinatos from a 1920s house recipe, Barolo infused with dozens of herbs and spices, among them two kinds of quinine bark, gentian, cardamom, cloves and vanilla. Bittersweet and warming, it's made for sipping after dinner, or alongside dark chocolate.