Luciano Sandrone
Le Vigne
Barolo
2016

The producer

Luciano Sandrone is one of the few producers in the region who does not descend from generations of wine growers and winemakers, he just wanted to make wine. After graduating from agricultural college in the early 1970s and gaining work experience from various top estates in the region, he began acquiring vineyards in the mid 1970s and vinified his first grapes in 1978. In 1981, he brought the 1,500 bottles of his first Barolo, from the 1978 vintage, to Vinitaly, where an American broker bought all of them. 

Not encumbered by history, Luciano mixes up modern and traditional approaches to winemaking, while also making both a blended Barolo (Le Vigne) and a single vineyard bottling (Cannubi Boschis) of Barolo. The wines are aged in 500 liter French tonneaux with only a small proportion of new wood included. ‘Barolo Le Vigne’ is blended from vineyards across the region, whereas the flagship wine ‘Barolo Aleste’ is made from fruit from the Cannubi Boschis single vineyard, but had its name changed in 2013 to ‘ALESTE’, which is the combination of the names of Luciano’s grandchildren (ALEsia and STEfano). 

Sadly, Luciano passed away in January 2023 after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 76 and a great loss.

The wine

Le Vigne is blended from vineyards across the Barolo region, including Baudana in Serralunga d’Alba, Villero in Castiglione Falletto, Vignane in Barolo, and Merli in Novelo. Each parcel is vinified separately in open steel tanks and is then blended and aged for 18 months in 500 litre French oak barrels. A muscular, yet precise and balanced wine of immense fruit concentration and complexity.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.