Winemaker Notes
With its great structure, this wine is particularly adapted to red meats, braised dishes and game in general. It is an ideal accompaniment for cheeses and our typical local cuisine.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is fantastic and still structured, with racy and linear tannins that run long and true, but are so polished and pretty. Medium-bodied with a lovely long finish that caresses the palate.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From Barolo’s most celebrated (and recently expanded) single-vineyard, the 2010 Barolo Cannubi is a deeply floral and elegant expression with sharp contours that give the wine a sense of focus and definition. Pressed violets and dried jasmine lift from the glass and with just a few swirls, the wine begins to reveal red cherry, licorice, balsam herb, moist earth and anise seed. This is a great wine from Marchesi di Barolo, one of the region’s legacy producers. Drink: 2017-2028.
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Wine Spectator
Leather, licorice and tar notes accent the core of cherry in this sinewy red. There's plenty of fruit to balance the structure, though this finishes on the chewy side for now. Fine length. Best from 2018 through 2030.
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Wine Enthusiast
An inviting fragrance recalls rose, violet, berries and a whiff of leather. The understated palate offers up sour cherry accented with subtle oak, toast, espresso, vanilla and baking spices alongside drying tannins. Drink 2018–2025.
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.