94pts James Suckling

Attractive raspberries and cherries with hints of roselle and red spices. Some blood orange, too. Medium- to full-bodied, polished and refined with compact tannins and velvety texture. It’s ripe but fresh with pure and vivid red fruit character and a lengthy finish. Attractive now, but better after 2025.

93pts Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

The Elvio Cogno 2020 Barbaresco Bordini (with 8,000 bottles made) shows extra power and heft in terms of its fruit delivery. This hot-vintage expression offers medium fruit texture with a classic presentation of cherry, redcurrant, licorice, blue flower and spice. It needs a few more years of bottle age, but we're not too far off from optimal drinking.

93pts Jeb Dunnuck

Pale ruby with light garnet, the 2020 Barbaresco Bordini is elegant with the perfume of red raspberry, fresh orange peel, and fresh red flowers. On the palate, it is medium-bodied, with super-fine, sweet, polished tannins, fresh strawberry, and a good finish. It is ready to drink now or over the coming 10-15 years.

Winemaker Notes

Ruby red in color with light garnet highlights. Great finesse on the nose, harmonious and complex. Sensations of ripe red fruit and violet, with spicy undertones. Enveloping tannins, great elegance, sapidity and persistence on the palate.

Winery Notes

A wine that most perfectly conveys the spirit and essence of its place, Barbaresco is true reflection of terroir. Its star grape, like that in the neighboring Barolo region, is Nebbiolo. Four townships within the Barbaresco zone can produce Barbaresco: the actual village of Barbaresco, as well as Neive, Treiso and San Rocco Seno d'Elvio.

Broadly speaking there are more similarities in the soils of Barbaresco and Barolo than there are differences. Barbaresco’s soils are approximately of the same two major soil types as Barolo: blue-grey marl of the Tortonion epoch, producing more fragile and aromatic characteristics, and Helvetian white yellow marl, which produces wines with more structure and tannins.

Nebbiolo ripens earlier in Barbaresco than in Barolo, primarily due to the vineyards’ proximity to the Tanaro River and lower elevations. While the wines here are still powerful, Barbaresco expresses a more feminine side of Nebbiolo, often with softer tannins, delicate fruit and an elegant perfume. Typical in a well-made Barbaresco are expressions of rose petal, cherry, strawberry, violets, smoke and spice. These wines need a few years before they reach their peak, the best of which need over a decade or longer. Bottle aging adds more savory characteristics, such as earth, iron and dried fruit.