Hold a glass of Barolo up to the light and the first impression is almost always the same: this cannot possibly be a serious wine. The color sits somewhere between garnet and brick, thin enough to see through, closer to what most people expect from a Pinot Noir than from something described as the “king of wines.”

Then it reaches the palate, and the impression reverses completely.

Barolo is made entirely from Nebbiolo, grown on the steep hills of the Langhe in Piedmont, Italy’s northwest corner, tucked beneath the Alps. Nebbiolo is a strange grape by most standards: it ripens late, it is thin-skinned despite what follows, and it produces almost none of the deep pigment that gives most “big” reds their color. What it produces instead, in enormous quantity, is tannin and acid.

Traditional tasting notes for Barolo reach for the phrase tar and roses, and it holds up: a dark, savory, almost resinous undertone beneath a distinctly floral top note, with cherry, dried herb, leather, and truffle layered through the middle. Young Barolo can be genuinely difficult to enjoy on its own, all edges and grip. Given a decade or more in the bottle, that same tannin softens into something silky, and the wine becomes one of the most complete arguments in Italy for patience.

This is also the cleanest contrast the year offers. Napa Cabernet, back in Week 22, occupies the same rough category, a big, structured, cellar-worthy red, and gets there by the opposite route: deep color, ripe fruit, and oak. Barolo gets there through perfume, savory structure, and time. Same destination, opposite roads.

This week follows that structure through three more stops: why the wine needs fat on the plate to show its best, what makes Nebbiolo behave this way in the first place, and what happens when Barolo meets a braise built specifically to answer it.