Unlike many of today’s top Barolo producers – growers who started making their own wines in the late 1970’s and 1980’s – the Mascarello family have been making and bottling their own wines for generations. Maria Teresa Mascarello, who runs the firm today, learned to make wine from her father Bartolo, an iconic producer who died in 2005. Bartolo joined the firm in 1945 and learned winemaking from his father, Giulio, who in turn had been trained by his own father, Bartolomeo, who had been the cellar master at the Cantina Sociale di Barolo before it closed during WWI.
At the end of the war, Barolo production rested squarely in the hands of a dozen or so large vinification houses which purchased their grapes from numerous small farmers. Giulio Mascarello pioneered a new direction by establishing his own cellar in 1919 and immediately bottling a portion of his production, selling the rest in demijohns. By the 1930’s, Giulio had decided to purchase his own vineyards in key Barolo crus – Cannubi, San Lorenzo and Rué – allowing him to hone his art as a master blender of nebbiolo for Barolo. He was one of the very first grower-producers in the denomination. Bartolo joined his father in the business right after WWII.
During WWII, Bartolo fought against the occupying German forces as a partisan in the Langhe hills around Barolo. In one of our last interviews, in 2003, he recounted how he and his comrades “saved the Americans.” “We were watching from the banks of the river as a column of Americans arrived in the strangest cars we ever saw, which we later discovered were Jeeps. The crossing was very slow, and one car with four soldiers left the convoy and moved down a few yards to cross on their own. But the Tanaro is treacherous with different depths. Halfway across, the Jeep suddenly sank. We ran down with ropes and dragged the men to shore. They gave us chocolate and cigarettes saying, ‘Thanks, Buddy!’”
Bartolo and his father together made monumental Barolos of structure, finesse and intensity, and Bartolo continued the tradition. He also decided they should bottle their entire production, and by the 1960’s the family’s Barolos had set the benchmark in the denomination. A tasting in 2010 of the 1964 vintage proved that they have beautifully withstood the test of time. The oldest bottle in the cellar is a 1955. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, international critics launched an assault on traditional Barolos in favor of dark, dense bottlings with excessive espresso and vanilla sensations derived from aging in new barriques. Bartolo began a long battle to defend classically crafted Barolos. Traditional but never conservative, he became the denomination’s fearless guardian of traditional Barolo. Bartolo joined forces with two other outspoken producers of classically crafted Barolo: Teobaldo Cappellano and Giuseppe Rinaldi. The three dubbed
themselves “The Last of the Mohicans.”
In his later years, Bartolo could not get around due to illness and his office became one of the most popular destinations in Barolo as people came to him. To help pass the time he began hand-painting his own wine labels, and his most famous one, No Barrique No Berlusconi, is now a much sought-after collectors’ item. The label lampooned the double evils facing Barolo and Italy: barriques and Berlusconi. Each label featured a headshot of the infamous prime minister – which Bartolo had cut out of Berlusconi campaign flyers – with the slogan scrawled across a wall in the background. The earliest ones had a flap over Berlusconi’s face. Bartolo said: “When you get sick of looking at him, just pull down the window.”During the 2001 elections the carabinieri raided a shop in Alba and confiscated a bottle of No Barrique No Berlusconi Barolo, for “displaying political propaganda in an unauthorized space.”
By the mid-1980’s, single-vineyard Barolos were an obsession in the denomination. However, Bartolo always believed in the hallowed tradition of making Barolo from different vineyard sites to create natural balance. He often claimed, “No single vineyard performs exceptionally every year, so it’s important to have vineyards in different areas for aroma, complexity and balance.”
Today, Bartolo’s daughter, Maria Teresa, runs the winery, following her father and her grandfather’s traditional methods. She eschews selected yeasts and favors long fermentation and maceration times – “anywhere from 30 to 50 days depending on the vintage,” says Maria Teresa. Fermentation takes place in glass-lined concrete tanks with no temperature control, and she ages exclusively in traditional Slavonian casks. The firm remains small scale, producing a total of 30,000 bottles – half of which are Barolo – from 5 hectares devoted to Piedmont varieties. Like Bartolo, Maria Teresa continues the age-old custom of making Barolo by blending her 3 hectares of nebbiolo – all planted in prime vineyard sites, including Cannubi.
Cannubi is not only one of the most revered crus in Barolo, its legally defined boundaries are being contested in Italy’s highest court. Maria Teresa, the most vocal of the vineyard’s 11 growers, doesn’t mince words: “Cannubi is a 15-hectare area that is one of Barolo’s most historic and proven vineyards. It’s completely unacceptable that one winery, Marchesi di Barolo, is aggressively petitioning the government to expand Cannubi to 32 hectares. This would be unfair to consumers, and it would set a dangerous precedent that could undo 20 years of mapping out Barolo’s official boundaries.” The case went to Italy’s highest court on May 3 this year, but the judge ordered a postponement until June. According to Mara Teresa, this was because the court “could not locate any of the previous judgments handed down from the lower courts.”
Maria Teresa does no marketing or promotion and does not even have a website. “Internet? I don’t even want to know about it.”
