Giuseppe Cortese Barbaresco Rabajà 2021

Product information

Giuseppe Cortese Barbaresco Rabajà 2021

Nebbiolo from Barbaresco, Piedmont, Italy

$187

$180ea in any 3+
$173ea in any 6+
Closure: Cork
🍇RABAJÀ RABAJÀ RABAJÀ 🇮🇹

Description

Stepping up to the famed Rabaja Cru the DJ has dialled it up! Deeper, darker, longer yet maintaining a transparency. Perfume on savoury fruit, a refined slatey note with a lick of tar. Like all of Cortese Neb’s it drinks beautifully. Clearly built with a little more time in bottle in mind you need to have some Blue Label Barbaresco to sate your Cortese gland whilst having a little more patience here. Mouthfeel plays with chalkiness and grip finishing with a fine line of sapid cleansing bitterness that works as fruit builds post swallow. Having seen the evolution of many a Cortese Barbaresco this will yield increasingly savoury, umami notes whilst retaining the current transparency as it ages and the youthful aggression of the tannins softens. It’s going to make for delicious drinking!

Paul Kaan, Wine Decoded Aug 2026

The 2021 Barbaresco Rabajà is complex, dynamic and youthfully austere-in other words, it’s classic Rabajà. Dark-toned fruit, menthol, licorice, spice, gravel, incense, tobacco and dried herbs fill out the layers. Medium in body and complex, with myriad shades of expression, the 2021 is a drop-dead gorgeous beauty. Readers can also expect a Riserva edition.

Antonio Galloni, Vinous 95 Points

In stock

Check out all of the wines by Giuseppe Cortese

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

You could call Giuseppe Cortese a one trick pony.

The majority of his Nebbiolo comes from just 1 vineyard

Boy, it’s one hell of a pony – Rabajà.

Traditional version of the great Cru. A wine featuring structure, elegance and a personality of its own.

Barbaresco Rabajà is our most important wine and has an intense and ethereal perfume with fresh notes that evolve into scents of spices, tobacco and brushwood notes as it ages. A dry, full and robust flavour with a rich and harmonious structure; garnet red colour.

Grape variety: 100% nebbiolo

Surface area: in Barbaresco 4 hectares in the “Rabajà” zone, with south, south-westerly exposure

Altitude: 235 / 315 meters a.s.l.

Soil: Limestone and clay soil rich in minerals and stratified with layers of “tufo”

Age of vineyard: around 50 years. Density of planting system guyot-4,000 vines per hectare

Vinification: around 30 days of fermentation in stainless steel and old cement tanks

Ageing: 20/22 months in Slavonian oak barrels ranging in size of 17 to 25 hectolitres and in age of 5/6 years minimum. Minimum 10 months of maturing in the bottle before being released for sale.

 

“It’s impossible not to admire these genuine, sincere wines and their equally unpretentious prices”. Antonio Galloni

About Guiseppe Cortese

Giuseppe went solo in 1971, making his first wine under his own name.

About the 2021 Cortese Vintage

From Galloni:

This is a fine set of new releases from Cortese. The entry-level wines are terrific, a theme that continues through to the Barbarescos. Readers who enjoy structured, traditionally build wines will find much to admire. As has been the case for a few years now, the wines seem to be gaining in finesse, which is always great to see.

Where in the World is Giuseppe Cortese?

Cortese’s best vineyard is undoubtedly his Rabajà

Contrary to how it may appear when seen from a distance, the Rabajà hill is anything but homogeneous and can be broadly divided into at least two areas. The first bordering on Asili coincides with the picturesque amphitheatre overlooking the Martinenga cru, and mostly enjoys a south-westerly aspect. The second, on the other hand, is more linear and faces due south, though within it there are some evident variations due to marked undulations around the hillside. In both cases, the style of the wine is, however, richer and bolder than the Asili and Martinenga (although a more uncompromising, mineral character tends to emerge in the second area).

Cortese’s Rabajà is mainly facing south-west in the hollow above Martinenga, south for the remainder

Click to enlarge 🔎
95 Points

The 2021 Barbaresco Rabajà is complex, dynamic and youthfully austere-in other words, it's classic Rabajà. Dark-toned fruit, menthol, licorice, spice, gravel, incense, tobacco and dried herbs fill out the layers. Medium in body and complex, with myriad shades of expression, the 2021 is a drop-dead gorgeous beauty. Readers can also expect a Riserva edition.

Antonio Galloni, Vinous

Where in the world does the magic happen?

Giuseppe Cortese, Strada Rabaja, Barbaresco, Piedmont, Province of Cuneo, Italy

Barbaresco
Piedmont
Italy

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