An Afternoon in Barolo with Aurelio Settimo

Saturday, March 21st
4:00-5:30 PM
In the Private Dining Room of Forbes Mill Steakhouse Danville
$45 per attendee, includes wine, antipasti, tax and gratuity
Space is extremely limited—advance tickets required

Dinner at Forbes Mill afterward?? Reserve on OpenTable:

Welcome to Danville, PRIMA Vini! Let’s get this party started!

Although we won’t be opening our own store in Danville until later this spring, we wanted to introduce ourselves to the neighborhood sooner by welcoming Davide Settimo, co-owner of Aurelio Settimo, one of our very favorite wineries in Barolo, to Forbes Mill Steakhouse on March 21. This late afternoon tasting and seminar conducted by Davide and PRIMA owner/wine director John Rittmaster will highlight the Settimo wines from the famed Rocche dell’Annunziata vineyard, the ‘Grand Cru of La Morra.’

We’ll be tasting:

2022 Dolcetto d’Alba
These vines are actually southeast-facing in Arborina, across the road from Settimo on a slope that, on the opposite side of the swale, belongs to Elio Altare. Why isn’t this Barolo? Because, winemaker Tiziana Settimo says, ‘we love Dolcetto!’ This is a darker, richer, real gutsy style of Dolcetto that is extremely savory and food-friendly. She holds it back on purpose so its rough edges vanish and it drinks way over its paygrade.

2022 Langhe Nebbiolo
2022 was very hot and dry and made, what is for Settimo, a bigger-boned wine with some serious chutzpah. It’s a longtime PRIMA favorite in the ‘baby Barolo’ style with a lot of class and nuance. Love this wine!

2021 Barolo Rocche dell’Annunziata
Is Rocche the La Tâche of La Morra?! The Settimos are the second-largest landholder in the MGA, making this the flagship wine for the cantina. Some of the classiest juice out there, especially when you consider what her neighbors get for lesser exposures in this top vineyard. This is a stunner, a wine for the ages! 

2019 Barolo Riserva Rocche dell’Annunziata ‘Black Label’
Fahgettaboutit! Tiziana only makes the Riserva in truly special vintages, and 2019 was about as good as it gets.

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 Barolo and Langhe Nebbiolo.

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, her son 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 Cerequio, forms the sweet spot of La Morra’s so-called Grandi Vigne vineyards. Tiziana currently has 14 acres under vine, 8 of which are in the heart of Rocche and range in age from 30 to 50 years old. These vines are dedicated to her 3 small bottlings of Barolo and the tiny bit of Langhe 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. The Barolos here are lovely Old-School wines that drink well all through their lives.

from right to left:
PRIMA owner/wine director John Rittmaster, Anne Poole (Rittmaster), Tiziana Settimo, Davide Settimo, Giulia (Davide's partner)