Barolo & Vino Nobile di Montepulciano

[misterjive]

Try these Barolos, if you can find them: Gaja, Giacosa, Vietti, Borgogno, Azelia, Rocche dei Manzoni. As for price, I don't know what kind of prices you are going to encounter on Cyprus, so I would say that if you can find a Barolo from a top producer, pay what you are willing to pay! By this, I don't mean pay whatever it costs to get one of these bottles; rather, I mean that only you can say what is affordable for you, and by extension, only you know how badly you want a particular bottle of wine. (The perfect example of this principle is dining out. In the United States, people who should "know better" routinely pay $40-50 at the restaurant for a bottle of wine that costs as little as $20 or even $15 at their local wine store. Why do they/we do this? Because they/we want to.)

One more word of advice: if you are interested in trying Barolos, you should also try some Barbarescos (I could be quite Italianate and say "Baroli," and "Barbarescei," but there are limits to being a pedant, even in this field). Barbaresco, rightly or wrongly, is often called Barolo's "Kid Brother," because although it is also Nebbiolo-based, it is generally the lighter and less powerful of the two (although all generalizations, including this one, are often false). Other reasons for this dichotomy are that Barbaresco matures more rapidly than Barolo, and historically, Barolo has fetched higher prices than its so-called Kid Brother. But, times change and paradigms shift. I usually prefer Giacosa Barbaresco to Giacosa Barolo, for example, and to confuse matters further, some Barbarescos hit the palate like monster Barolos. So for all of these reasons, try some Barbarescos too....