Winemaker Notes
Match this wine with beef, buffalo, boar and venison dishes, rich stews and aged Parmesan.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
A classic yet fresh wine with aromas of red currants, red cherries, mint, violets and licorice. Medium-bodied with condensed tannins. It’s velvety, tight-knit, super crisp and polished.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Barolo Cerequio is a wine of deep, underlying power, grit and determination. The wine opens to black fruit and earthy overtones with sticky tar, licorice and crushed river stone. Surprisingly, the primary fruit is not a protagonist. Instead, the wine offers a smoky and evolved personality that comes as a pleasant surprise. You can taste the youth of the wine, however, on the palate. The nervous tannins need time to integrate and soften.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: There is no question that Michele Chiarlo is one of Piedmont's greatest stars. The 2013 Barolo Cerequio is alluring, beautiful, and long. TASTING NOTES: This wine tantalizes from beginning to end. Its aromas and flavors of savory spices, leather, black fruit go endless to the wine's finish. Pair with a savory lamb stew. (Tasted: March 5, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
-
Wine Spectator
A tightly wound version, whose dense matrix of tannins binds the cherry, licorice, tobacco and iron flavors. All the elements are in the right proportions and should come together nicely in time. Offers fine sweet fruit and a licorice aftertaste.
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.