Winemaker Notes
Pair with wild game and birds, braised meat, marinated rabbit, seasoned cheese, truffle plates.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Some chocolate aromas sitting across attractive spice-poached cherries. This has good aromatic clarity. The palate has a very neatly arranged, well-structured style, offering a nice tannin and acid interplay through the finish. This is in good form. Try from 2022.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Barolo Cannubi perhaps shows less textural richness in this vintage. What it lacks in volume, it makes up for in beautiful aromatic intensity. The bouquet offers territory-driven tones of forest berry, wild rose and dried violets. The freshness and the brightness of those aromas are well intact. The mouthfeel is lean, but it does have ample structure at the back with bright acidity and polished tannins. This expression of Cannubi from Chiara Boschis can be described in a single word: elegant.
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Wine Spectator
Cherry, eucalyptus, spice and tar flavors mingle with lively tannins here, showing a nice balance between the core of sweet fruit and the firm structure. Overall, this red is elegant and long. Best from 2021 through 2035.
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.