Winemaker Notes
Deep ruby red color with garnet hues. The nose is very elegant and neat with intense notes of red berry jams, wild herbs and chocolate. On the palate it is dry, fresh, powerful, with thick-yet-polished tannins and a persistent fruity finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This expressive red shows energy backing its cherry, raspberry, earth, sanguine and tobacco flavors. Beefy tannins put a lock on the finish, yet this is long and the ripe fruit is the lasting impression.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a sun-drenched slope in Serralunga d'Alba, the Giovanni Rosso 2017 Barolo Cerretta shows a rich and dark appearance with black cherry, dried blackberry and a touch of apricot. Those hot-vintage fruit aromas cede to spice, metallic earth, rusty nail and licorice. The wine is lovely in terms of mouthfeel, with good freshness and lasting structure.
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Decanter
Giovanni Rosso's Cerretta could be the least interesting wine in the range in terms of complexity, but it's a good place to start. Feminine in style, it shows delicate confected cherry and strawberry with clay minerality. Crunchy, fragrant tannins combine with crisp acidity and good length.
We are a small, family-owned producer in the heart of the Barolo commune of Serralunga d'Alba. We make only red wines, and our passion is for Barolo and its great grape, Nebbiolo.
Since the 1890's the Rosso family has farmed vineyards in Serralunga d'Alba, notably the Crus of Cerretta, La Serra, Broglio, Meriame, Sorano, Costa Bella, Lirano & Damiano. During the early 1980's Giovanni Rosso restructured the vineyards with the aim of growing the best fruit.
Giovanni's son, Davide, studied Oenology and gained invaluable experience in France. In 2001 Davide, then 27 years old, took charge of the vinification & affinamento/elevage of the wines with one goal in mind: "Wine should be a perfect copy of its terroir"... in this case from the slopes of Serralunga d'Alba, among the finest soils in the world.
The Giovanni Rosso cantina (winery) is located in the hamlet of Baudana, just a couple of kilometres north of Serralunga d'Alba village. A traditional family cascina, or farmhouse, it houses the fermentation, ageing, bottling and labeling facilities as well as the offices.
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.