A spectacular long-aged grappa from the excellent Marolo distillery, well known for creating some top-quality small batch grappas, with a strong sense of terroir.

This is another example, a grappa made with Nebbiolo pomace from Barolo winemakers, a style of wine known to be one of Italy’s finest, and made local to the distillery in Piedmont.

The pomace is gathered from small scale producers that place the same importance on terroir as Marolo. It is then distilled slowly in bain marie stills. Not only is this grappa notable for its strong sense of place, but also for its maturation process.

Whilst double maturations are commonplace in the whisky world, they are rarely seen in grappa. This bottling hasn’t just been matured in two different casks, but two entirely different woods: small oak barrels which impart an intense vanilla flavour, and acacia barrels which give little in the way of flavour, but grant a waxy texture.

The final result is an extraordinarily flavoursome grappa, with notes of dark oak, perfumed grapes, black pepper, toasted spices (star anise, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and liqourice), some slight cedarwood, vanilla, raisins, apples, jammy berries, plums, almond, hazelnut, dark chocolate, leather, green wood and tobacco smoke.

Bottled at a generous 50% ABV, this is a tour-de-force bottling, as good as any spirit its age.

• Distillery / brand
  Marolo
• Country
  Italy
• Bottler
  Distillery Bottling
• Age
  20 years old
• Non-chillfiltered
  No
• Natural colour
  No
• SKU
  034152