Sometimes you just have to ask. After selling the entirety of our small allocation of

Tiziana Settimo’s outstanding 2019 Barolo Rocche dell’Annunziata via pre-arrival, we were left with the age-old problem of having too many customers for not enough wine. ‘Would you be getting any more,’ we queried Tiziana’s importer? ‘Soon,’ he said. But, he told us, he also had, sitting on his warehouse floor, 48 bottles of Settimo’s 2017 Rocche. Wouldn’t that be cool?  Uh, yeah! Count us in!  This wine is one of my personal faves! 2017 and 2019, vintage-wise, share a lot of the same DNA- a warm harvest with tons of concentrated fruit. The 2017s, though, have always had a bit of a reputation for rusticity: A little bit less of that silkiness in the mid-palate and more obvious tannins than the 19s. As time as gone on, though, the 2017 Barolos have, overall, shown a lot more freshness and verve than first anticipated, as well as a lot more breadth and depth. Many Barolo pundits have re-evaluated their thinking and now place the harvest more in the 2013, 2006 camp than other warm harvests like 2015, 2009 or 2007: Wines with a lot of ripe fruit, very significant undercarriages and better long term potential. Tasting the Settimos’ 2017 Rocche at the cellar last fall more than confirmed this assertion. Tiziana has, indeed, created a very substantial 2017 with significant near-term appeal and better than a puncher’s chance to go the distance too. We loved its spice, camphor and cinnamon notes, its deep core of Rocche’s dried cherries, bitter chocolate and nicely integrated tannins. We are very excited to be able to bring you this impressive 2017 at what we think is a very good price. You can drink it now or cellar it as long as you like.

Also, we still have the Settimos’ excellent Dolcetto d’Alba and exceptional Langhe Nebbiolo in stock. These are both terrific wines. The Dolcetto, in particular, has made a lot of friends at $25 a bottle.  

For the as-yet uninitiated, Tiziana Settimo is a longstanding OG member of Piemonte’s ever-expanding contingent of smart, talented women winemakers, but not one you’ll probably be hearing a lot about outside of La Morra. She’s not someone you’ll meet making the rounds of trade shows in New York, Chicago, LA or San Francisco to promote her wines and she simply doesn’t have the time or inclination to submit them to critics, magazines or competitions. She prefers, instead, to concentrate on farming her family’s large parcel of the famous Rocche dell’Annunziata cru in La Morra (Settimo has the second-largest holding in the vineyard) and fashioning her grapes into a couple of hundred cases of really tremendous Nebbiolo and Barolo. Tiziana was raised into the business by her father Aurelio whose own father had settled in the hamlet of Annunziata in 1943. She took over for good when Aurelio passed away in 2007, but had been, de facto, running the family business for years. Much to Tiziana’s relief, Davide has joined now too. The farm sits on a privileged part of Rocche, just above the hamlet and, with its immediate neighbors, Brunate and Cerrquio, forms the sweet spot of La Morra’s so-called Grandi Vigne vineyards (in blue above).  Tiziana currently has fourteen acres under vine, eight of which are in the heart of Rocche and range in age from 30 to 50 years old. These vines are dedicated to her three small bottlings of Barolo and the tiny bit of Nebbiolo and Dolcetto she makes. Tiziana learned winemaking from her father who had learned it from his, and she considers herself a staunch traditionalist. Even though the cantina has undergone a recent renovation, you still won’t find any new wood or small barrels in residence amongst the concrete fermenters and large Slovonian oak botti, this is Old School winemaking at its purest. Her Rocches are, of course, sensational. Made only from the sweet spot of the amphitheater, Tiziana ages her Nebbiolo for 36 months, 24 of those in older French oak casks before bottling.