Cascina Luisin's winery was built in 1910, right within the Rabaja cru itself, and when the first harvest came in three years later, it stood as the first winery built outside the village of Barbaresco. The Minuto family were farmers long before they were winemakers, and Roberto, great-grandson of founder Luigi, still carries that history with him. His grandfather helped found the region's first growers' consorzio back in the 1930s, and family notebooks record years when it was someone's factory wage, not the harvest, that paid for new casks.

Four generations on, Roberto is a traditionalist by conviction, and it shows in every decision he makes. Asili and Rabaja, the two most celebrated crus in Barbaresco itself, sit at the heart of the estate: Asili, planted in 1958, is bright and mineral, the first of the two to open up, while Rabaja is the more brooding and structured of the pair, built to reward patience. Rabaja-Bas, a cooler pocket just north of Rabaja, gives the lightest and most elegant of his wines, and Basarin, over in Neive, brings a softer touch that rounds everything out in Paolin. That same traditionalist instinct carries into the cellar: long, ambient-yeast fermentations in concrete, extended time on skins, and years in Stockinger casks, all in service of letting each site speak for itself rather than shaping the wine around a house style.

A warm year, calmly handled.

Cascina Luisin's 2022 Barbarescos have come through lighter on their feet and softer in tannin than the season had any right to produce. It was one of the hottest, driest years the appellation has seen in some time, and growers who managed it well did so by dropping fruit early, giving what remained on the vine the room it needed to ripen properly rather than simply cooking under the heat. Luisin's wines are a clear example of the restraint paying off: instead of the dense, overripe style that summer could easily have delivered, these are wines with real freshness intact and tannins that settled in gently rather than needing to be tamed. It's the kind of vintage that rewards a steady hand over a big one, and at Rabaja and Asili, that's exactly what showed up.

Kerin O'Keefe found the 2022 Cascina Luisin wines exceeded her expectations across the board, citing generous fruit, polished tannins and real aromatic lift.

Old Vine Barbaresco. 2022 laid down the challenge, Luisin prevailed.