Winemaker Notes
A great wine for important dishes, red meats on the spit or grilled, game, "grande cuisine" white and red meat dishes and aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Fragrant and elegantly structured, this radiant red offers scents fragrant blue flower, aromatic herb and wild berry. The structured palate offers ripe red cherry, orange peel, cake spice and star anise alongside a backbone of assertive but polished tannins. Drink 2022–2032. Cellar Selection.
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Wine Spectator
Sweet cherry, menthol, tar, tobacco and earth flavors are well proportioned in this supple red. A hint of orange peel comes into play as this lingers on the solid finish. Best from 2020 through 2033.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Barolo Rocche dell'Annunziata is more advanced in terms of its overall evolution. The bouquet offers dried cherry, plum, dark spice and tobacco. The bouquet presents moderate intensity (this lower aromatic threshold is common to many of the Barolos from this vintage), and the quality of fruit is slightly more aged and spicy as a result. Smooth tannins and firm consistency characterize the mouthfeel. This Nebbiolo offers near and medium-term drinking potential.
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.