Winemaker Notes
A garnet red. Delicate and persistent fragrance with trace scents of licorice, rose and violet. Full flavored, warm, with extremely elegant tannins offering long persistence.
A great wine for important dishes, red meats roasted on a spit or grilled, game, dishes of gourmet white and red meats and ripe cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This bright red is in the elegant camp, boasting strawberry, blood orange, cherry, rose and mineral aromas and flavors. Shows fine harmony, with a tensile structure today, while its full potential is on display on the superlong, mineral-infused aftertaste. This is all about intensity, complexity and finesse. Best from 2029 through 2050.
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James Suckling
Lots of mushrooms, earth, dried flowers and elderberries on the nose. The palate is juicy, with dark fruit and firm tannins, with lovely, underlying, persistent blue fruit. This should come around and become better with age. Best from 2028.
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Vinous
The 2021 Barolo Rocche dell’Annunziata is terrific. Macerated cherry, orange peel, kirsch, mint and white pepper are all beautifully delineated. I would give the 2021 a few years in bottle, as the tannins are pretty forbidding at this stage. Time in the glass brings out the haunting, perfumed aromatics that are such a Rocche signature. This is another fine effort from Ratti. Like the Serradenari, the Rocche dell’Annunziata needs time in bottle to be at its most expressive.
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.