The transformation at Azelia over the last handful of years has been nothing short of extraordinary. That's not to say the wines weren't compelling before. They were, and they also aged well. But recent vintages have really gone to another level. Since 2014, Luigi Scavino and his son, Lorenzo, have taken these wines into a direction of extreme finesse. The Barolos now see 55-60 days on the skins, with submerged cap fermentation. Two thousand sixteen was the first vintage in which the Bricco Fiasco and San Rocco were aged partly in cask. By 2018 both of those wines saw only large format oak, as is the case with the other Barolos in the range. Readers will note the addition of a new wine, the Barolo Ceretta. Timing, as they say, is everything. The Scavinos certainly timed their 100th anniversary brilliantly. These wines are spectacular.

 96+ WINE ADVOCATE
The newest single-vineyard Barolo to be released by this estate in celebration of its centennial anniversary, the Azelia 2016 Barolo Cerretta offers a rich and slightly sweet quality of primary fruit with cherry, wild plum and summer fig. Like many wines from Serralunga d'Alba, the bouquet tends to unwind in broad, sweeping motions instead of the quickly paced crescendo of high notes that you get in Castiglione Falletto, for example. This wine washes over the palate with rich textural fiber (with very elegant tannins) and an open-knit fabric of dark cherry and blackberry aromas all framed by earthy tones of black truffle and iron ore. This wine represents the efforts of three decades of hard work. Luigi Scavino's father had long dreamed of making a Barolo from Cerretta, but the family waited 30 years to have old, well-established vines. Like the other Baroli from Azelia, fermentations see submerged cap, and skin maceration times are long, up to 60 days. The wine ages in large oak casks for 30 months. Only 3,600 bottles were made of this debut cru