2020 Giuseppe Cortese Rabaja Barbaresco Piedmont 750 ml

It’s nearly impossible to overdo the praise for Barbaresco’s Rabajà cru.

It’s one of the most important vineyards planted to Nebbiolo, a crown jewel of Barbaresco and one of just three sites in the area that Vinous rates as “Exceptional,” their highest classification. They note it produces “epic, structured Barbarescos” that are famously long lived.

Rabajà wines also tend to cost a mint: In Produttori del Barbaresco’s vast lineup of single-vineyard wines, you’ll pay a top-of-the-range $80. Bruno Giacosa’s bottlings cost upwards of $250. Those facts make Giuseppe Cortese’s 2020 Barbaresco Rabajà—grown in a top-shelf vintage and bearing 97 points from longtime Wine Enthusiast editor Kerin O’Keefe, who literally wrote the defining book on Barolo and Barbaresco—one of the greatest Rabajà buys out there.

The 2020 vintage is a standout—but because it was warm but not hot, it won’t lend itself to the kind of wines that age for a half-century, Cortese decided not to bottle their famous Rabajà Riserva. Instead, they blended those lots into this bottling, making it one of the best editions in years.

Giuseppe Cortese founded his winery in 1971, and bought land in Rabajà, the most prestigious vineyard in the hamlet his family called home. In the 1990s, his son Pier Carlo came back from the prestigious Enological School of Alba and ratcheted the quality up yet another level, prompting Antonio Galloni to call the new wines “a fine set of new releases from Cortese” with “much to admire.”