Winemaker Notes
Excellent with roasted red meat, game, braised veal.It matches perfectly with truffle-based dishes and mature cheese.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas and flavors of dried berry, chocolate, peach and prunes follow through to a full body, with velvety tannins and a dried-fruit finish. Drink or hold. Very ripe fruit character.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Age for two years in botte grande, the 2010 Barolo Rocche dell'Annunziata is delightful and bright with savory tones of dried fruit and exotic spice with rosemary oil, dried sage and autumnal leaf. Barolo Rocche dell’Annunziata hails from one of the best and largest single-vineyards in La Morra. The wine also offers great value for this level of quality. The mouthfeel is compact and silky. Drink: 2016-2026.
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Wine Enthusiast
It opens with scents of plum, red berries, sage and balsam. The understated palate offers up crushed wild cherry accented with notes of vanilla, espresso, sage and menthol alongside brisk acidity and bracing tannins. Give it time to develop fully. Drink after 2020.
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.