Winemaker Notes
Deep ruby red with orange highlights. An intense rose bouquet with scents of licorice and spice. Full bodied, austere, yet elegant. A pleasant “goudron” becomes noticeably apparent after 7-8 years of aging.
Rich, dry and deep in flavor, Barolo is an excellent accompaniment to red meats and spicy cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Beautifully ripe and fresh red-cherry and sliced-strawberry aromas, leading to a palate that offers a svelte, juicy and elegant core of fine and fresh strawberries and red cherries with a juicy thread of acidity. Fresh and elegant. Drink or hold.
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Wine Spectator
This red is beginning to hit its stride, featuring fading cherry and berry fruit, mushroom and woodsy notes, menthol and iron accents. Still firm and austere on the finish, yet the excellent length indicates its full potential. Best from 2025 through 2045.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Marchesi di Barolo 2013 Barolo Riserva has been carefully aged and is ready to drink now. Or you could hold it longer if that is your pleasure. The bouquet exhibits sweet crème de cassis or cherry liqueur with tobacco and earthy sensations at the back. It is open-knit and quite generous at this point in time, although there is a slightly sour note on the finish that might disappear in due time.
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.