Barolo Annunziata

Barolo Annunziata is the bottling Lorenzo Accomasso drew from the estate's vines around the house and winery in the Annunziata frazione of La Morra - the companion wine to the flagship Rocche and Rocchette parcels a few hundred metres away. Made the way Accomasso made everything: fermented and macerated in concrete for 50 to 60 days with the cap punched down by hand, aged about three years in old 50-hl Slavonian botti and rested for years more before release. No fining, no filtration, nothing modern.

2012 in La Morra was a compressed season - cold wet spring, heat from late June, a cooler September that rescued the aromatics - and it leans mid-weight, fragrant and supple rather than muscular; critics split between praising its typicity and calling it merely decent. Accomasso released later than his neighbours as a rule and sold nearly everything from the cellar door; this bottle travelled through the German market (Oberhuber, Munich).