Why it matters
The producer
Lara Rocchetti and Luisa Sala founded Lalù in 2019, releasing their first three wines from a rented cellar in Serralunga d'Alba. Both are from Turin. Both studied at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, where they met on the first day of classes. The name folds their first names together: La(ra) and Lu(isa).
Lalù is a new-generation Barolo producer with a deliberately small footprint: 3.5 hectares across two communes, roughly 8,000 bottles a year, and a debut range of three wines. Their flagship is a Barolo from Le Coste di Monforte. The approach in vineyard and cellar is low-intervention throughout, built around preserving the character of each parcel rather than correcting or amplifying it.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Barolo DOCG covers a cluster of communes in the Langhe hills south of Alba, in the southern part of Piemonte. The wine must be made entirely from Nebbiolo and aged for a minimum period before release. Within the DOCG, commune character varies considerably. La Morra, in the northwestern part of the zone, sits on calcareous Tortonian soils and produces Barolos that tend toward earlier-drinking elegance, with softer tannin profiles and more floral aromatic lift than wines from the harder, more austere sandstone and clay formations further southeast.
Monforte d'Alba, by contrast, sits on Helvetian soils with more compact clay and limestone, and its Barolos are typically firmer in tannin and longer in development. Le Coste is a recognised zone within Monforte d'Alba, at altitude, where Nebbiolo ripens slowly through the long Langhe autumn.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
For the Nebbiolo and Barbera, Lara and Luisa use whole-cluster and whole-berry inclusions. Rather than feeding clusters through a mechanical destemmer, they remove only the peduncle from each bunch by hand, leaving the rachis and pedicel intact. In the fermentation vessel, the grape skins and seeds are accompanied by the rachis and pedicel of the bunch, which contributes tannin and phenolic complexity from a different part of the plant. The additional tannin from the rachis is softer than seed tannin.
No crushing takes place. Transfers through the cellar use gravity where possible rather than pumps, and pumpovers during fermentation are performed by hand. Each of these choices reduces mechanical stress on the fruit and the developing wine.
Wines to know
The range in view
The Lalù range runs across three appellations and two communes.
The Barbera d'Alba is a red wine from Barbera, Piemonte's most widely planted red grape. Barbera carries natural high acidity and low tannin, which in the glass translates to a wine with vivid red fruit, a firm acid line, and a light to medium body. The whole-cluster and whole-berry approach adds phenolic complexity and moderate phenolic depth without heavy extraction.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Barolo Le Coste di Monforte. It is the wine that Lara and Luisa built the project around, and it carries the most detail about what they are trying to do: whole-berry fermentation on Nebbiolo from an altitude site in Monforte d'Alba, aged in Austrian oak that stays quiet in the background. In the glass it gives spice, underbrush, and a long finish. The tannins are present and genuine but not forbidding. This is a Barolo with the patience to develop in bottle and enough character to make sense of now.