Winemaker Notes
Pair with wild game and birds, braised meat, marinated rabbit, seasoned cheese, truffle plates.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Barolo Cannubi is a fine and sculpted wine that has benefitted from the cool vintage conditions and the long growing season. The wine shows a very pretty nose with wild berry aromas followed by pressed rose, ash, wild mint, tea and earthy black truffle. It shows fine tannins that are slightly camouflaged by the generosity of the fruit. The Cannubi cru offers extreme elegance and finesse. Despite those svelte contours, this wine is built to last.
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Wine Spectator
Warm and inviting, offering rich flavors of cherry, raspberry, rose and spice, with flashes of mineral and tobacco. Nonetheless, this is densely packed, showing refined tannins and a chalky, stony feel on the long finish. Best from 2021 through 2038.
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James Suckling
The purity of fruit to this is impressive. Strawberry, blueberry and lavender aromas follow through to a medium to full body, firm and silky tannins and a fresh finish. Better in 2020.
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.