Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A beautiful red with soft and velvety tannins, juicy fruit and a walnut and dark-berry character. Full body. Lovely and genuine.
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Decanter
Cherry and plum aromatics. Beautiful concentration of fruit and structure with dried berry, savoury meaty notes and superb elegance. Amazing quality and concentration.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is one of the most popular and important wines made by Marchesi di Barolo. The 2013 Barolo Cannubi is a fine and delicate expression with big floral intensity. You get dried lavender and rose hip on first nose. Below those more fragrant layers are solid aromas of wild cherry and red currant. This expression of the Cannubi cru is accessible yet delicately complex and nuanced at the same time.
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Wine Spectator
Very pure, this evokes rose, cherry, strawberry, mineral and tobacco aromas and flavors. Lean and taut, finishing with a chalky sensation on the finish. Offers fine harmony and length, with a dry, minerally finish. Best from 2022 through 2038.
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Wine Enthusiast
Tight and focused, this opens with aromas of wild berry, red rose, culinary spice and a whisper of menthol. Chiseled and austere, the palate offers sour cherry, pomegranate, white pepper and a hint of anise. Youthfully assertive fine-grained tannins and bright acidity provide the framework. Give it time to soften and fully develop. Drink 2023–2033.
Responsible for some of the most elegant and age-worthy wines in the world, Nebbiolo, named for the ubiquitous autumnal fog (called nebbia in Italian), is the star variety of northern Italy’s Piedmont region. Grown throughout the area, as well as in the neighboring Valle d’Aosta and Valtellina, it reaches its highest potential in the Piedmontese villages of Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero. Outside of Italy, growers are still very much in the experimentation stage but some success has been achieved in parts of California. Somm Secret—If you’re new to Nebbiolo, start with a charming, wallet-friendly, early-drinking Langhe Nebbiolo or Nebbiolo d'Alba.
The center of the production of the world’s most exclusive and age-worthy red wines made from Nebbiolo, the Barolo wine region includes five core townships: La Morra, Monforte d’Alba, Serralunga d’Alba, Castiglione Falletto and the Barolo village itself, as well as a few outlying villages. The landscape of Barolo, characterized by prominent and castle-topped hills, is full of history and romance centered on the Nebbiolo grape. Its wines, with the signature “tar and roses” aromas, have a deceptively light garnet color but full presence on the palate and plenty of tannins and acidity. In a well-made Barolo wine, one can expect to find complexity and good evolution with notes of, for example, strawberry, cherry, plum, leather, truffle, anise, fresh and dried herbs, tobacco and violets.
There are two predominant soil types here, which distinguish Barolo from the lesser surrounding areas. Compact and fertile Tortonian sandy marls define the vineyards farthest west and at higher elevations. Typically the Barolo wines coming from this side, from La Morra and Barolo, can be approachable relatively early on in their evolution and represent the “feminine” side of Barolo, often closer in style to Barbaresco with elegant perfume and fresh fruit.
On the eastern side of the Barolo wine region, Helvetian soils of compressed sandstone and chalks are less fertile, producing wines with intense body, power and structured tannins. This more “masculine” style comes from Monforte d’Alba and Serralunga d’Alba. The township of Castiglione Falletto covers a spine with both soil types.
The best Barolo wines need 10-15 years before they are ready to drink, and can further age for several decades.