Giuseppe Cortese Barbaresco Rabajà MAGNUM 2018

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

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 2018 Barbaresco Vintage

From Galloni:

This is a gorgeous set of wines from Giuseppe Cortese. Gabriele Occhetti describes 2018 as a year without weather shocks and harvest that wrapped up during the first half of October. I tasted three wines. The straight Barbaresco is a blend of fruit from Trifolera and lots of Rabajà that don’t go into the vineyard designate. It sees about 18 months in oak. The Rabajà bottling gets a few more months in barrel. There is no Riserva Rabajà in 2018, but there likely will be in both 2019 and 2020. I also had a chance to taste the 2016 Riserva, which was just bottled a few months ago. These remain very much classically built wines with natural fermentations (both primary and secondary) and a generally minimalist approach in the cellar.

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