Pio Cesare Dolcetto d’Alba 2007
We recently went to a wine tasting where the wines being offered were advertised as “Rock Star Reds”. We don’t typically make a point of attending very many wine tastings, but this one featured one wine each from Querciabella in Tuscany and Pio Cesare from Piedmont, both of whom are pretty reputed producers and so we thought it’d be worth a go. As it turns out, it was well worth the visit. Both the Querciabella Chianti Classico and Pio Cesare Barbera d’Alba Fides spend some time in French oak before being bottled, giving them a distinctly oaky sheen to accompany deep fruit flavors. While both were a bit overly oaked for my taste, they were nonetheless quite nice wines that I’m glad I had the chance to try, and I wouldn’t mind sipping a glass of at some point.
But the real gem of the tasting came when we got home later and opened up the bottle of wine that we chose to buy that evening, a Pio Cesare Dolcetto d’Alba. Even though I found the Pio Cesare Barbera d’Alba Fides to be too oaky, I decided to give their Dolcetto d’Alba a shot and picked up a bottle. My thinking was this: since barbera is a grape that is higher in natural acidity with soft, sweet tannins, the oak flavors from the French barrels would stand a greater chance of overwhelming some of the natural flavors of the wine; dolcetto on the other hand is known for producing wines low in acidity that are decidedly fruit-forward and which may therefore stand up better to the flavors imparted by the barrel. So I figured that perhaps the aging in French oak would serve the dolcetto better than it served the barbera, much as we’d found with a Dolcetto d’Alba from Fratelli Revello that had rich, deep red/black fruit flavors complemented by a firmness imparted by the French oak barrels it aged in.
It turns out that I was 100% wrong, but with the result being much more interesting than I’d expected. Essentially, my error was twofold.
The first was my impression of barbera. It turns out that because barbera is so widely planted throughout Piedmont, accounting for more than 50% of Piedmont’s red wine production, the styles in which it is produced range far and wide. A more traditional style of barbera may be relatively light, acidic, and a bit rough around the edges, in large part owing to the grape being planted in less than ideal conditions where it struggled to ripen. Today there are a number of contemporary winemakers who are taking advantage of better viticultural and winemaking practices to make barberas that have greater depth and concentration of fruit, and that tame some of the grape’s natural acidity through aging in French oak. Pio Cesare, with the Fides single-vineyard bottling in particular, is one of those wineries. Their Barbera d’Albe Fides is a wine with great fruit concentration and noticeable elements imparted by the oak barrel, a more contemplative Barbera d’Alba that can stand apart on its own.
So that was my first mistake. My second was to assume that this approach to using French oak barrels would apply to all of Pio Cesare’s wines. It doesn’t. The Dolcetto d’Alba shows little traces of oak and if I had to guess, I’d say that it doesn’t spend any time in French oak barrels, in contrast to the Barbera d’Alba Fides (an older article that I’ve read indicated that the 2003 Dolcetto d’Alba aged entirely in stainless steel, versus the Fides which spent 24 months in 70% new French oak).
The result is a very enjoyable dolcetto-based wine that does a great job of capturing the essence of what the grape’s name implies: “little sweet one”.
The wine has a deep, velvety, purplish ruby color. The nose has scents of black cherries, cassis, and tobacco. The palate has soft tannins alongside flavors of cherries, raspberries, and mint. A slight acidity livens up the flavors nicely. The finish is medium in length, with the dark fruits continuing, and a faint hint of anise that contrasts sharply with the fruit.
All in all, this is a nice wine, and exceeded my expectations. Instead of being overly oaked, you get the impression that the winemaker strove to make a dolcetto that reflected the wine’s traditional role as the everyday wine of Piedmont. In that I think they succeeded. This Dolcetto d’Alba is simple and straightforward in a very good way, very enjoyable to drink. I do think it is a bit pricey for being that type of wine ($22), but don’t regret having given it a try. It does make me want to try their standard Barbera d’Alba though (not the Fides), which supposedly is not aged in French oak as the single-vineyard version is. Something to keep my eyes open for in the future.
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