Cascina Luisin Barbaresco Paolin 2021 750ml

Luisin’s non-vineyard-specific Barbaresco “Paolin” comes from various holdings throughout the zone, but is built primarily around 45-year-old vines in the sandy south-facing cru of Basarin in Neive. As with all of the estate’s Barbaresco, this ferments naturally in concrete and ages in large custom-built Stockinger casks of Slavonian-oak origin. Gentler in its structure and slightly more fruit-forward than the three wines below, “Paolin” offers a sense of understated elegance wed to a mouthwatering mineral tension that feels close to a platonic ideal of Barbaresco, and it is strikingly accessible even in an early stage of its development.