Giuseppe Mascarello e Figlio
Monprivato
Barolo
2009

The producer

Giuseppe Mascarello & Figlio, founded in 1881, is one of Barolo’s finest producers. The 12ha family estate is located, in the Monchiero village, just outside the delimited Barolo area, but the family is strongly associated with the Barolo commune Castiglione Falletto, in which the majority of their vineyard holdings are found. The family’s flagship bottling is the Barolo Monprivato – which is one of the finest vineyards in all of Barolo.

The Mascarellos own 6.2 ha of the Monprivato vineyard (roughly 93%), and are currently the only ones to use the ‘Monprivato’ name on the label. Today the estate is run by Mauro Mascarello, who took over the reins from his father in 1967, and who was the one to take initiative to start vinifying Monprivato on its own in the 1970s. He also introduced sorting tables and lowered yields, altogether having a positive influence on the quality of the grape material. 

The wine

Monprivato is the Mascarello family’s flagship vineyard – they own 6.2 hectares which equates to around 93% of the total and are the only ones to currently use the Monprivato name on the label. Monprivato is located in the village of Castiglione Falletto at 280 metres altitude. The soil is clay-silt with a high active limestone content and the exposure is southwest. Only produced in outstanding vintages, Monprivato is one of the greatest Barolos of all.  

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.