A wildly scented nebbiolo packed with fruit

published 17 March 2017

2013 Barbaresco, Bruno Rocca, Piemonte, Italy (£49.50, Eton Vintners, 01753-790188, EtonVintners.com; £51.96, Richard Granger Fine Wine, 0191-281 5000, RichardGrangerWines.co.uk; £52.99, Harrogate Fine Wine, 01423-522270, HarrogateFineWineCompany.com).

Part two of my Piemonte focus (see MatthewJukes.com for all my previous wine columns) concentrates on Barbaresco, the equally starry but much smaller wine region that sits to the north east of Barolo. Once again, nebbiolo is king and here the wines tend to be a little more forward and lighter than many of the blockbuster Barolos. It is here that Angelo Gaja made his fortune, with his eponymous wine, while simultaneously doing the greatest regional worldwide wine marketing of all time. He put Barbaresco on the map and in our cellars and today a goodly number of producers sell their wines in the UK.

One of the finest of all is Bruno Rocca. The most striking aspect of this ethereal creation is the perfume, which leads the way and also signals the future fruit flavours and theme of this vintage. Fine in weight but packed with fruit, this is a wildly scented nebbiolo with a cranberry and cherry core. I expect it will be another in a run of successes for this estate. See my website for the full 2017 Piemonte Report with 850 tasting notes from 147 wineries.

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Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.