Elio Altare, Barolo Vigneto Arborina, 1986

A 40-year-old museum piece from the man who rewrote Barolo. In 1983 Elio Altare took a chainsaw to his father's old Slavonian botti — the founding gesture of the Barolo Boys movement, and the moment that split the appellation into modernist and traditionalist camps. Arborina was his cuvée — among the very first single-vineyard Barolos ever bottled, from his family's La Morra parcel. The 1986 was a difficult, low-yielding vintage marked by spring hail, but in the early-modernist Altare hands it produced a wine of real elegance — and four decades on, it has shed its youthful frame entirely. Now run by daughter Silvia, the estate remains an icon. A bottle this old is about texture, mature aromatics, and presence — not primary fruit.