Winemaker Notes
Ruby red in color, this aristocratic and complex wine offers notes of small fruits, licorice, and sweet tobacco. A full-bodied wine with silky tannins.
Pair with mushroom pasta, roasted meat and game, mature cheese.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Sun-dried cranberries, stones and oranges on the nose follow through to a juicy, angular palate with firm tannins that grow to a crescendo. Expansive and mineral, with a transparent and linear finish. Drink from 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a hot and dry vintage, the Michele Chiarlo 2020 Barolo Cannubi has a pretty bouquet with dark fruit aromas, but the wine does not have the intense focus that we see with Nebbiolo in the cooler vintages. It offers an immediate side with soft cherry flavors and spice. It's a fun and accessible Barolo overall.
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Wine Spectator
More savory than fruity, revealing menthol, mint, eucalyptus, cherry and floral flavors. This red is elegant, with a line of well-mannered tannins girding the long finish. Best from 2028 through 2045.
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Wine Enthusiast
A mesmerizing Barolo with warm, ripe plums and succulent red fruits, enveloped in enticing spices. The palate is firm and well-structured, with notable oak spice but used in a way as an accent not a statement. This robust and commanding wine captivates the senses with bold flavors and unwavering structure. Drink Now - 2040
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Vinous
The 2020 Barolo Cannubi is laced with crushed red berry fruit, rose petals, cedar, sweet pipe tobacco and orange peel. Medium in body with lovely vibrancy, the 2020 has a ton to offer. I especially admire its energy, something this bottling has not always shown.
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.