Crissante Alesandria, Langhe Nebbiolo DOC

People love to toss around the term “Baby Barolo,” usually with the same casual recklessness as someone ordering truffles out of season. But every once in a great while, the phrase fits like a perfectly worn leather glove. This is one of those times. If you poured this blind—no label, no hints—I’d swear I was drinking a Barolo from a producer who knows every wrinkle and shadow of a great hillside. And in truth, that’s almost exactly what’s happening. Picture the Roggeri Cru in La Morra: a slope with the kind of poise and quiet authority that makes you stop mid-step. Vines perched just inches below the official Barolo boundary—an invisible line drawn decades ago by bureaucrats with clipboards, carving up hillsides as if they understood their souls. Their rules tell us this fruit is “Langhe Nebbiolo.” The wine in the glass tells a very different story. Here, the borders that normally frustrate us suddenly work in our favor. Forty dollars buys you a wine that, dressed in a Barolo label and handed to you at a white-tablecloth restaurant for $200, wouldn’t raise an eyebrow from anyone who’s spent time on these hills. It’s grown a short drive from the town of Barolo itself, down the road from La Morra—a place where Nebbiolo doesn’t just grow, it glows. Seductive, silken, unmistakably noble. If you ever needed proof that Langhe Nebbiolo can punch so far above its weight class that it breaks the ceiling entirely, this is it.

To understand why this wine can taste so much like Barolo without carrying the name, you have to understand Piedmont’s Langhe hills—the heartland of Italy’s most noble reds. This landscape of rolling slopes, medieval villages, and perfectly angled vineyards produces the world’s greatest expressions of Nebbiolo. At the center sits Barolo, a tight constellation of about seven major communes—La Morra, Barolo, Serralunga, Castiglione Falletto, Monforte, Verduno, and Novello—each with its own personality and soil fingerprint. Barolo’s DOCG rules are famously strict: vines must grow above specific elevations, pure south-facing exposures are typically reserved for Barolo itself, and the wines must age a minimum of 38 months (18 in oak) before release—62 months for Riserva. Just outside those borders lies Langhe Nebbiolo, a category that often serves as a window into a producer’s Barolo DNA. When the fruit comes from serious hillsides just shy of DOCG status—like the slopes of Roggeri—you get wines with real structure, nuance, and pedigree without the price tag or the mandatory aging.

Crissante Alessandria is one of La Morra’s quiet treasures—an estate that has been crafting soulful Nebbiolo since 1958, long before the modern Barolo renaissance. The winery sits in the Roggeri section of Santa Maria, a small pocket of La Morra known for producing extraordinarily aromatic, silky, yet structured wines thanks to its elevated slopes and marl-rich soils. Founded by Crissante Alessandria and his wife Teresa, the estate originally sold grapes to the big Langhe houses until they finally began bottling their own Barolo from Roggeri and Capalot right beneath the farmhouse. Everything here is traditional at heart: careful vineyard work, gentle fermentation, and aging in a mix of large Slavonian oak casks, tonneaux, and select barriques—a balance they refined over decades as they expanded vineyards and began vinifying their crus separately. Today the family farms about six hectares and produces three Barolos—La Morra, Capalot, and Galina—each a snapshot of its site. Their Langhe Nebbiolo benefits directly from this world-class raw material and philosophy: pure fruit, lifted aromatics, fine structure, and clarity of place.

The 2021 Langhe Nebbiolo is shockingly serious: lifted rose petals, dried cherry, redcurrant, sweet strawberry skin, crushed violets, tobacco, forest floor, damp leaves, and a whisper of La Morra’s signature truffle-tinged earth. The palate is sleek yet deep—silky tannins, bright acidity, and a Barolo-like spine that builds steadily without ever overwhelming. Fine mineral tension carries the finish, which hums with spice, dried herbs, and a savory echo of underbrush. It’s graceful, structured, and unmistakably Nebbiolo from a great hillside. Enjoy this after a brief decant with fresh tajarin—the finest golden ribbons of egg-rich pasta in Piedmont—tossed with a slow-simmered veal-and-pork ragù. The wine’s lively acidity cuts through the richness while its floral lift and precise red-fruit purity elevate every bite. It’s a pairing so seamless and comforting that it makes you wonder why life isn’t always this uncomplicated and delicious.