Bartolo Mascarello Barolo Demonstrates Strength Across Numerous Vintages: Invest In The 2018 Vintage

“On the palate, this Barolo is so shiny and polished that it feels like silk. Without a doubt, this is one of the top wines of 2018" - Monica Larner, Wine Advocate

Wine Advocate has tasted their way through 233 Barolo wines from the 2018 vintage. Two of them outperform all others and top the vintage with 97+ points. One is the 2018 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo, which is available in this investment tip. Dive into the case and learn how Bartolo Mascarello Barolo has historically performed - across multiple vintages.

Plus, take a trip to Italy with us and learn much more about Barolo, Brunello, and Piedmont in the video at the bottom of the article.

Bartolo Mascarello: Among Barolo's Very Best

Today Bartolo Mascarello is considered among the greatest from Barolo, thanks to talent, persistence, and excellent education of new generations.

From the end of World War II until his death in 2005, Bartolo Mascarello was known for his great personality, as well as his ability to conjure consistently majestic and monumental Barolo. He defended the traditional approach to making Barolo, and the tradition was ably defended by Bartolo's daughter Maria Teresa, who took over the reins of Bartolo Mascarello after her father's death.

When Maria Teresa took over the torch from her father, she could have chosen to introduce entirely new approaches to winemaking - but she did not. She sees herself as the custodian of a noble tradition, and she is convinced that she will continue her father's important work. Bartolo shared his innermost secrets, and Maria Teresa not only inherited his talent for winemaking - she also inherited his philosophy, which Bartolo had inherited from his father Giulio, who himself had inherited it from his father Bartolomeo.

Bartolo was behind some of the finest Barolo ever made, and while Maria Teresa inherited the traditional approach, Maria Teresa's small adjustments have made the wines even more elegant and taken them up a level, but she has never abandoned what Barolo should be:

”The idea of a perfect wine doesn’t exist. I am trying to make an honest wine, one that reflects all of the qualities of our territory, both its strengths as well as its flaws. There are only a few sites that can really give expressive wines. Our ancestors used to look at the hills in the winter, and where the snow melted first, they planted Nebbiolo. Today Nebbiolo is planted everywhere.” – Maria Teresa

Maria Teresa's Barolo comes exclusively from the same Nebbiolo plots on which her father successfully operated.

Performance Across Vintages

Returning to the quote that began this investment tip, it is clear that Wine Advocate is excited about the 2018 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo. They acknowledged the citation with 97+ points, surpassed only once, by the 2016 vintage, which scored the maximum 100 points. Vinous awards 94 points, which in Vinous terms places it neither top nor bottom. With 95.5 points across the two critics, this 2018 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo ranks above average out of all released vintages from this millennium, though Wine Advocate ranks it among the best.

That Vinous and Wine Advocate disagree is, of course, because taste is individual regardless of field of expertise - and their occasional wide divergence in scores only underscores their integrity. However, it is a fact that Bartolo Mascarello Barolo performs. Back in November 2020, you could invest in 2016 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo through RareWine Invest. If you invested then, in two years you have achieved a return of 30 %.

2016 was a great vintage - in fact the best ever for the house, but the price reflects that too. The 2018 vintage is not as great as 2016, but the entry price is also significantly cheaper. Right now, you get access to the 2018 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo at a price that's 40% lower than what the 2016 vintage costs now. Furthermore, your investment price of € 300* at right now is less than the average price in the world according to winesearcher.com, giving you an attractive starting point. Especially considering the following historical returns.

According to Liv-ex, the last 10 vintages** that have been on the market for a minimum of five years, over the last five years, have given a return of 103.1 %, which is equivalent to 15.2 % in average annual return. For five consecutive years, no less.

*Price per bottle, ex. VAT and tax. **Crop 2004-2013

Add to this that Liv-ex in July 2022 presented a list of the best performing wines in the first half of 2022. Here Bartolo Mascarello highlighted its 2016, which had risen 18.9 % in the first half of the year.

Finally, in August 2022, Liv-ex announced that Bartolo Mascarello Barolo 2010 and four other wines were the most traded in August by value.

Bartolo Mascarello thus shows its strength across numerous vintages unchallenged by scores - which only underlines the demand. Around 15,000 bottles of Bartolo Mascarello Barolo are produced annually, a severely limited number for a global market.

RareWine Invest's Opinion

The 2018 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo is one of the two very best Barolos of the 233 tasted and rated by Wine Advocate from the 2018 vintage. And while the enthusiasm is not nearly as high at Vinous, the rating is still high enough to put it in the top half of this millennium across scores from both critics.

The fact is, this is an honorable vintage that offers an inexpensive entry point for investing in Bartolo Mascarello. And while historical returns cannot predict the future, it is nonetheless striking that numerous vintages of Bartolo Mascarello Barolo, regardless of scores, have delivered handsome returns over time.

A ranking on Liv-ex's Italy 100 index also underpins demand, but the question is whether 15,000 bottles can satisfy that demand. High demand and low supply are, as you know, the cornerstones of a classic wine investment. 

Do you believe in one of Barolo's best producers, whose performance historically outperforms most classic assets? The 2018 vintage has just been released, which is why this is also your opportunity to get in from the start.