Paolo
Scavino
Following the death of their father, Alfonso and Paolo
Scavino divided their father’s vineyard holdings
in the commune of Castiglione Falletto. Paolo chose an
eponymous title for his estate, which included a 2-hectare
plot in Falletto’s Fiasco cru known as Bric
dël Fiasc, situated in Castiglione Falletto.
While established in 1921, the site was first represented
via a single-vineyard bottling in 1978, a production
Paolo undertook at the behest of his son, Enrico. The
Scavino estate’s premiere cru production and most
renowned bottling, Bric dël Fiasc is now one of
four cru wines in the portfolio (Cannubi, Rocche dell’Annunziata
Riserva, and Bricco Ambrogio are the other single-vineyard
Barolos).
Enrico assumed direction of the estate upon his father’s
passing, having cultivated an intimate knowledge of Paolo’s
craft and viticultural philosophy. Enrico, however, unlike
many other second-generation winemakers in Piemonte,
did not wholly adhere to the established protocol. After
a period of time, he began implementing a quality-driven
course of modernization, becoming among the first in
the region to institute temperature-controlled winemaking
and storage facilities. He instituted the most demonstrative
shift in 1993, when he removed Slavonian oak from his
Barolo aging regimen—which, until that time, had
been the sole medium of aging—becoming a pioneer
in the use of 100 percent barrique and rotary fermentation.
While this radical stylistic shift effectively served
to brand Enrico as a modernist, it never really established
itself as the reigning house style, constituting more
of an experimental phase than a period in the estate’s
evolution.
In 1998, just a few years into the new regime, Scavino
brought the Slavonian oak back, abandoning the sole barrique
protocol for a more balanced approach—one year
of aging in barrique, followed by one year in cask. He
didn’t merely reinstate it, however, having come
to believe that the wine that is Barolo requires both
barrique and cask. He also extended the maceration period
for his Barolos by two to three days. In effect, this
transitional stage in Scavino’s production philosophy
reduced the vigilant attention that had previously been
accorded the cellar. With the cellar no longer serving
as the pivotal focus of the process, heightened attention
was directed towards the vineyard, resulting in Scavino’s
practice of extreme yield restriction. While this modified
take on modernism has been in effect for a significant
period, the estate may continue to reach back further
yet. For her initial solo venture—a 2006 single-vineyard
Barolo (representing Via Nuova Vineyard), Paolo’s
daughter Elisa opted for manual pumping over and punchdowns
rather than rotary fermentation, despite the fact that
her father privileges this method’s user-friendly
properties and ability to extract a more substantive
degree of polyphenolic material than the older approach.
She also referenced the more recent past in her use of
100 percent new Taransaud oak.
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