Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with red meats, braises and goat or sheep’s milk and cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Tar, tobacco, blackberries and five-spice powder. Full-bodied with chewy and very structured tannins and an ash-coated finish, lifted through by refreshing acidity.
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Wine & Spirits
Fruit for Bricco Botti comes from vines planted in 1996 on the southwest-facing slope just below the Pecchenino farmhouse. This is the family’s most dense and robust dolcetto, aged for two years in 25-hectoliter casks to soften the firm tannins. It’s more savory than Siri d’Jermu (also recommended here), unfolding with notes of baked plum and roasted fennel layered with licorice, tobacco and dark chocolate. Cellar it for at least five years before pouring with braised leg of lamb.
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Wine Spectator
This is intense and saturated, offering violet, black currant, graphite, tobacco and orange peel aromas and flavors. Solidly built, with a backbone of tannins shoring up the finish. Drink now through 2022.
An easy drinking red with soft fruity flavors—but catchy tannins, Dolcetto is often enjoyed in its native Piedmont on a casual weekday night, or for apertivo (the canonical Piedmontese pre-dinner appetizer hour). Somm Secret—In most of Piedmont, easy-ripening Dolcetto is relegated to the secondary sites—the best of which are reserved for the king variety: Nebbiolo. However, in the Dogliani zone it is the star of the show, and makes a more serious style of Dolcetto, many of which can improve with cellar time.
The hills of Dogliani, just to the south of the Barolo zone, produce the very best Dolcetto wines in the world. Its rolling hills reach higher elevations than those of Barolo and the area maintains strong Dolcetto vineyards as well as groves of hazelnut trees, farmland, pastures, and forests. Dogliani became its own DOCG in 2005; in order for a Dolcetto to be classified as Dogliani DOCG, it must come from one of the following communes: Bastia Mondovì, Belvedere Langhe, Clavesana, Cigliè, Dogliani, Farigliano, Monchiero, Rocca Cigliè, Roddino and Somano. Dogliani DOCG must have a deep red color, elegance, intense fruit, and aromas of currants, raspberry, and blackberry.