Very pure fruit with crushed strawberries, spices and white truffles on the nose. The palate is full and tight with brightness and focus. Firm, creamy tannins. The super quality of fruit really comes through here. Drink in 2024.

A serious wine to cellar, this opens with restrained aromas of fresh and dried cherries, black pepper, enticing violet and liquorice root. Intensely floral in flavour, it has an assertive, almost aggressive acidity at present, with muscular, still-rugged tannins at the end (although the initial impression is softer). Not really ready to drink now, but will improve with ageing.

The Azelia 2017 Barolo San Rocco shows some tightness and firmness initially, but it ultimately reveals an open and accessible quality of fruit with dried raspberry, cherry and wild plum. Those fruit flavors take a sudden turn to embrace some of the more mineral aromas associated with Serralunga d'Alba, such as iron ore and rusty nail. This hot and dry vintage release of 7,500 bottles doesn't show the same depth or complexity that we saw in the classic 2016 growing season. Instead, this wine is fruit forward and a little more contoured and streamlined overall. On the close, you do get a point of dusty astringency that should subside with time.