Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with fresh egg pastas, white meats, red meats, venison and old cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Here is a wine with a long and promising future ahead. The 2013 Barbaresco Riserva Asili is a Nebbiolo that boasts the tannic tightness, acidity and compact fruit flavors you look for when assessing a wine's potential for cellar longevity. This vintage delivers encouraging results on all fronts. The mouthfeel is firm, compact and ready to loosen with time. The bouquet is both generous and dramatic with dark fruit followed by spice, smoke and an attractive mineral footprint. The finish is dry and almost salty, thanks to those lingering tones of brimstone and pencil shaving. The 2013 growing season saw a late harvest, and this helped to achieve full tannic and flavor ripeness. Hold off from drinking this wine for at least 5 years but preferably more.
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Wine Enthusiast
Fragrant and elegant, this opens with a textbook Nebbiolo bouquet showing scents of tilled soil, rose, wild red berry, Alpine herb and a whiff of new leather. The taut, vibrant palate evokes sour cherry, juicy strawberry, licorice and clove framed in refined tannins and bright acidity. It's balanced and gorgeous but still young, so give it several more years to evolve into the beauty it's destined to become.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
Rich and silky, boasting cherry, strawberry, mineral, tobacco and spice flavors. Impeccably balanced, even with the firm line of tannins lingering on the finish. The acidity is vibrant, energetically driving the fruit, underbrush and mineral flavors. Best from 2023 through 2038.
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.
A wine that most perfectly conveys the spirit and essence of its place, Barbaresco is true reflection of terroir. Its star grape, like that in the neighboring Barolo region, is Nebbiolo. Four townships within the Barbaresco zone can produce Barbaresco: the actual village of Barbaresco, as well as Neive, Treiso and San Rocco Seno d'Elvio.
Broadly speaking there are more similarities in the soils of Barbaresco and Barolo than there are differences. Barbaresco’s soils are approximately of the same two major soil types as Barolo: blue-grey marl of the Tortonion epoch, producing more fragile and aromatic characteristics, and Helvetian white yellow marl, which produces wines with more structure and tannins.
Nebbiolo ripens earlier in Barbaresco than in Barolo, primarily due to the vineyards’ proximity to the Tanaro River and lower elevations. While the wines here are still powerful, Barbaresco expresses a more feminine side of Nebbiolo, often with softer tannins, delicate fruit and an elegant perfume. Typical in a well-made Barbaresco are expressions of rose petal, cherry, strawberry, violets, smoke and spice. These wines need a few years before they reach their peak, the best of which need over a decade or longer. Bottle aging adds more savory characteristics, such as earth, iron and dried fruit.