Product information

Giuseppe Cortese Barbaresco Rabajà 2019

Nebbiolo from Piedmont, Italy, Barbaresco

$135

$130ea in any 3+
$125ea in any 6+
Closure: Cork
🍇RABAJÀ RABAJÀ RABAJÀ 🇮🇹

Description

The 2019 Barbaresco Rabaja is a powerful, austere wine that is going to need a number of years to come around. I very much like the energy, but readers should not plan on opening a bottle any time soon, as the 2019 is seriously tannic and shut down at the moment. It’s a gorgeous Barbaresco that shows the more elegant hand that defines the approach today.

Antonio Galloni, Vinous 94 Points

The Rabajà sees a jump in sophistication depth and length. It’s such a pretty poised wine. Excellent acid balance and slatey tannins of quality and length. The aroma and flavour of Cortese Rabaja have a certain harmony to them that draws you in. There’s a lot to like here. The perfume is intoxicating. It’s the purity and translucence that shines in Cortese’s wines. Expressive for its youth it needs 3-5 years to start to show its full and considerable potential.

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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 2019 Barbaresco Vintage

From Galloni:

Two-thousand nineteen is an especially fine vintage at Cortese. The wines are deep, layered and super-expressive. Gabriele Occhetti describes 2019 as a late-ripening year, with a harvest that started in mid-October. The 2020s, on the other hand, strike me as a bit less even. There is some edginess in the tannin that is probably the result of less favorable conditions during the growing season. There will be no Riserva in 2020. As always, winemaking here is pretty bare-bones. Fermentations are spontaneous. The wines see fairly long fermentation/maceration, which can reach as much as 30-40 days on the skins for the Riserva. All the Barbarescos are aged in cask; about 18 months for the Barbaresco, 22 for the Rabajà and 48 for the Riserva.

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 🔎
96 Points

Enticing scents of blue flower, crushed mint, berry and vineyard dust form the nose along with a whiff of new leather. The firmly structured, focused palate shows cherry marinated in spirits, black raspberry and liquorice alongside a backbone of fine-grained tannins. It’s well-balanced, with vibrant acidity.

The Wine Enthusiast

94 Points

The 2019 Barbaresco Rabaja is a powerful, austere wine that is going to need a number of years to come around. I very much like the energy, but readers should not plan on opening a bottle any time soon, as the 2019 is seriously tannic and shut down at the moment. It’s a gorgeous Barbaresco that shows the more elegant hand that defines the approach today.

Antonio Galloni, Vinous

93 Points

With fruit from the village of Barbaresco, the 2019 Barbaresco Rabajà is glossy and bright with dried berry, cassis, aniseed and candied orange peel. This silky wine offers medium length, silky tannins and easy freshness.

Monica Larner, The Wine Advocate

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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