Giacomo Conterno, Barolo Cascina Francia, 2006

Nineteen years on, this is classical traditional Barolo drinking deep into its window. Cascina Francia is the legendary 16-hectare estate in Serralunga d'Alba that Giovanni Conterno purchased in 1974 — a single contiguous parcel that became the foundation of modern Giacomo Conterno. Today the estate is run by Roberto Conterno, who took the helm following his father's death in 2004 and has carried the family's purist traditional approach forward without compromise. The 2006 vintage was a solid classical Barolo year — structured, balanced, built to age — and the Cascina Francia bottling spends 48 months in large Slavonian botti, the traditional method that lets the wine evolve slowly and arrive in glass with all its tension intact. Nineteen years on, this is exactly where the wine wants to be: tannins resolved into silk, aromatics layered and deep, and the unmistakable Serralunga power still humming underneath. A library Barolo to treasure.