Tag: Nebbiolo
De Forville Nebbiolo d’Alba San Rocco 2007
There are some wines that you know are going to be good, even before you’ve had the chance to try them. Whether because of the producer or the importer, or perhaps the recommendation of a trusted source, these wines bring a wonderful degree of promise and sense of expectation to the glass. This was one of those, a wine that I had often imagined tasting and looked forward to with much anticipation.
The reason was two-fold. Firstly, De Forville is a Piedmont estate (and I love the wines of Piedmont) that I’ve read very good things about, especially the wines that they make from the famed Nebbiolo grape. Secondly, their wines are brought into the U.S. by Neal Rosenthal, my favorite wine importer by a long shot. The combination of a Piedmont wine, the Nebbiolo grape, and Neal Rosenthal as the importer was very exciting.
The De Forville family founded the estate in 1860 after first settling in Piedmont after leaving Belgium in 1848. Since then, the estate has been passed down from generation to generation and is managed today by Valter and Paolo Anfosso. The estate’s total holdings measure 10 hectares in the villages of Barbaresco (3.5 hectares) and Castagnole Lanze (6.5 hectares). The Nebbiolo grapes for this wine come entirely from the San Rocco Seno d’Elvio vineyard in the Barbaresco area.
In San Rocco, Nebbiolo d’Alba vineyards account for only 4.66% of the total plantings, with the majority going to Dolcetto d’Alba, Moscato d’Asti, and Barbera d’Alba. It’s one of the lesser areas of vineyards of those that contribute grapes to the great DOCG wine Barbaresco. Nonetheless, while Nebbiolo may not account for a large percentage of the grapes grown here, this noble variety has a long history of being planted here, and the De Forville estate uses Nebbiolo from throughout their holdings to produce a very well-regarded Barbaresco.
De Forville produces their wines pretty traditionally. After crushing, the grapes are left to ferment on their skins for as long as 4 weeks in the case of their Barbaresco. In late November, the wines are racked into large oak barrels (called “botti”) where malolactic fermentation occurs. Some of the Barbaresco and a Barbera that they produce are additionally aged in small oak barrels.
Tasting Notes
The nose is a complex blend of cranberries and candied cherries with the medicinal element of a ludens cough drop, underscored by a hint of a vanilla, and a foundation of warm earthiness. The palate is medium textured with huge, gripping tannins that threaten to grab hold of your taste buds and not let go. There are flavors of bing cherries, black licorice, tart raspberries, cocoa powder, and chili powder.With softer tannins the flavors would be more melded and pronounced, but at this stage they end up being just slightly muted. The finish is full of fresh, red fruits, with bowls of cranberries, raspberries, and strawberries, with subtle hints of mint and chipotle.
An absolutely intriguing wine, that I’m very lucky to have had the chance to try. I think it’s great now, and will be really stunning in a few years time.
It’s rare that I taste a wine and feel that it was opened before its prime. I’m really not that sophisticated when it comes to aging wines and having the patience to wait until they hit their prime. But in tasting this wine, and feeling the grip of those tannins and the influence that had on the presentation of the wine’s flavors, it was quite clear that in a few years, once those tannins mellowed and smoothed with time, the wine would be an absolute beauty to behold. So go! Buy a few bottles of this, stash them in your cellar, perhaps under the floorboards so that you forget they’re there.
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Bartolo Mascarello Barolo 1996
No wine holds my fascination in quite the way that Barolo does. And the irony is that until very recently, I’d only ever tasted Barolo on one previous occasion. And yet, the idea of Barolo has fired my imagination since I first began learning about wine.
Barolo is the wine produced in the DOCG of the same name, located in northern Italy’s Piedmont region. It is made from 100% Nebbiolo and is often cited as the purest expression of this finicky grape. Known as “the king of wines and the wine of kings”, Barolo is renowned for it’s remarkable aging potential and the miraculous grace and beauty that it acquires with extended aging.
Barolo is also ground-zero for the now two-decades old, international debate between traditional and modern-style producers. It is, in fact, where the whole debate took its starkest shape.
Up until the 1990’s nearly all Barolo was made in the same fashion. The grapes were grown in abundance in the vineyards, and after being crushed the wine (including skins and stems) was fermented over the course of 10-20 days in untopped oak vats. Following fermentation, aging took place in large oak casks called “botti”. The result was a very dry wine loaded with tannins, that required decades of aging before really coming into its own. Nonetheless, the result was a wine that was considered sublime by those who had the opportunity to taste its best examples.
But in the 1990’s wine-making in Piedmont (and worldwide) began to drastically change. Many trace the changes back to Angelo Gaja who began aging his wine in French oak barriques in the late 1960’s. With barriques came a host of other changes including better selection and wine-growing practices in the vineyards, the use of roto-fermenters designed to extract pigment but not tannin from the grapes, and briefer aging in barrels, to limit the oaky tannins added to the wine. The result has come to be known colloquially as the international style, since wines from California, Australia, Spain, and Italy all began to present themselves and taste so similarly to one another.
These were barolos that were accessible and delicious at a young age, and understandably they found a receptive audience among wine drinkers. But with this success came questions – about the wine’s ability to age, about the lack of terroir, or typicity of the wine – and inescapably a backlash from traditionalist producers. Those producers who continued to practice more traditional methods spoke out, sometimes fervently, against the modernist producers, and with this debate arrived what has come to be seen as a schism of sorts between the two schools, modern vs. traditional.
While most producers have a foot in both worlds, perhaps using some percentage of barriques as opposed to 100%, there are those iconic producers who cling to one side of the debate or the other. Angelo Gaja is perhaps the most prominent of the modernists, and Bartolo Mascarello was perhaps the most recognizable of the traditionalists.
Mascarello’s father Giulio was one of the first prominent grower-producers of Barolo. He began producing wines in the 1920’s and first bought land in the Cannubi area of Piedmont in the 1930’s. At this time, and for several decades to come, Barolo was always made as a blend of grapes from multiple plots, in order to take advantage of the strengths of each individual grape-growing area. It was this family business and tradition that Bartolo took over in 1981.
As the modern-style Barolo gained in popularity and production, Bartolo Mascarello quickly rose to prominence as the icon for traditionalist Barolo producers. The following statement from A Wine Atlas Of The Langhe aptly sums up his winemaking philosophy:
Faithful to his father’s teachings, Bartolo always made a Barollo that had no truck with fashion, a wine traditionalist by conviction and philosophy. There was no technological wizardry in his cellar, nor were they any barriques. Bartolo’s Barolo was made with grapes from the family’s four plots at Cannubi, San Lorenzo, and Ruè in the municipality of Barolo and Torriglione at La Morra. As used to be the custom, Bartolo made no vineyard selections, which ‘would have brought success at the box-office, but would have betrayed tradition.’
In his later years, when he was no longer able to actively take part in the winemaking activities, he devoted part of his time to creating hand-drawn labels for the Barolo, culminating perhaps in his several “No Barriques, No Berlosconi” labels in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. You can find some images of these labels here, here, here, and here along with lots of info here about the Mascarello Barolos.
I became fascinated with Bartolo Mascarello’s wines before I’d ever had the chance to try any of them. The story that he and his wines embody is utterly romantic, and for someone who is so intellectually interested in wine it is unavoidably attractive. I was entranced with the notion of being able to try the most traditional of traditional Barolos.
And yet, Mascarello’s wines are very rare and difficult to find. And so I was immeasurably lucky to receive a bottle of the Bartolo Mascarello 1996 Barolo from my lovely wife on the occasion of our first anniversary. This was a bottle produced by Bartolo himself, and we hesitated only briefly before opening it a couple of days after celebrating our wedded bliss.
The bottle itself is artfully understated (you can see a photo here). The wine poured a medium-deep purple in the center, fading to a rusty-colored red at the edges. The nose was delicately fragrant, with scents of fresh cherries, strawberries, and mint, layered against a backdrop of earthy minerality. The wine’s flavors are fresh and vibrant, with notes of black cherries, raspberries, a trace of black liquorice, herbal mint, and brambly minerals intricately woven together. The tannins are fairly mild, noticeable but not overpowering, and lending the wine a nice, firm grip. Despite the tannins the texture is light, making the wine easily drinkable. The finish seems to go on forever, with flavors of cherries alongside hints of chamomile and anise.
All in all, this wine absolutely lived up to the hype. Of all of the wines that I have had the opportunity to drink, this was one of the very rare ones that combined an intricate delicateness with vivid flavors. What is more, the wonderful combination of fresh fruit flavors and earthy, herbal tones was mesmerizing.
If I never try a Bartolo Mascarello Barolo again, I’ll be satisfied, as this was a superlative wine. Fortunately, we were able to pick up a bottle of the 2007 Bartolo Mascarello Dolcetto d’Alba recently, and I very much look forward to trying that. Yes, it’s not in the same league as the Barolo, but I believe that with this winemaker in particular you can rest assured that every wine you have the opportunity to try will speak vividly of its authenticity. In tasting these wines you’ll be able to gain a sense of both where the grapes were grown and who produced the wine.
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Antoniolo Gattinara 2001
The Nebbiolo grape produces such interesting wines, one of the few that I find easily discernible. There is just something about the color, flavor, and character of Nebbiolo-based wines that consistently stands out. The difficulty is that the finest Nebbiolo wines are those made in Barolo and Barbaresco, which of course come with a price to match. And so during the last few months I’ve been seeking out and trying Nebbiolo wines from different appellations to get a sense of the both depth and value they offer, relative to their more high-profile brethren.
The list of DOCs producing wines from Nebbiolo is surprisingly long. Along with Barolo and Barbaresco there are three other DOCGs on the list: Gattinara, Ghemme, and Roero. The definitions of each are unique. Barolo and Barbaresco must both contain 100% Nebbiolo, Roero 95-98%, Gattinara 90%, and Ghemme 70%.While Barolo and Barbaresco are pretty common to find in shops, I’ve found the other three much more difficult to locate. And those bottles that I have found have been from a rather small number of producers.
There are also several DOCs in Piedmont that feature Nebbiolo in varying proportions. Langhe Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo d’Alba must both contain 100% Nebbiolo, Carema and Albugnano 85%, Bramaterra 50-70%, Boca 45-70%, and Sizzano 40-60%. Of these, I’ve only ever seen Langhe Nebbiolo, Nebbiolo d’Alba, and Carema in shops.
This bottle from Antoniolo was the first Gattinara wine that I came across. I’d never heard of the producer and the label on the bottle was pretty stained and a bit mucked up, and so I was hesitant to try it. Nonetheless, my curiosity won the day, and we picked up a bottle from the 2001 vintage (there were also several bottles from the 2000 vintage). Upon returning home I looked up some info about the producer and was soon quite excited at finding this bottle.
Gattinara is a small zone located in northern Piedmont in the foothills of the Alps. Despite being located so far north, the zone has a favorable microclimate on account of being located between the Po River basin to the south and Lake Maggiore to the north. The result is a cooler climate and higher altitude than most of Piedmont that contributes a slightly different character to the Nebbiolo grapes grown there. The DOCG is also very small, producing only about 40,000 cases of wine a year, a minute amount relative to areas such as Barolo and Barbaresco.
Antoniolo was founded in 1948 by Mario Antoniolo and has been managed by members of the family ever since. According to the Gambero Rosso the quality of the wines has consistently increased year to year, as the viticulture and winemaking practices have been refined and improved. Perhaps the most notable aspect of their winemaking practices is the decision to use 100% Nebbiolo in making their Gattinaras, as opposed to blending in up to 10% of other grapes (as allowed by the DOCG regulations). They produce four Gattinaras, the blended offering (the one that we picked up) and three vineyard-specific bottlings: ‘Castelle’, ‘Osso San Grato’, and ‘San Francesco’. All three of these have been regular winners of the three glasses award from the Gambero Rosso.
This bottling is aged in medium-sized oak barrels for 24 months before being bottled and aged a further 12 months prior to release. The 2004s appear to be the most recent vintage that has been released.
I was instantly smitten upon seeing the wine in the glass. The color is a garnet red with rusty brown highlights, lightening to a brownish/amber at the edges, so common of Nebbiolo. The nose is rich with violets, plums, leather, and tobacco. The palate is lightly textured with soft tannins. Layers of black cherries and currants open up at the front of the palate, slowly mingling with a notable earthy minerality. On the long finish, a hint of acidity comes into the mix, accompanied by black cherries and a trace of the smoke that was notable in the nose.
A wonderful wine, elegant and very expressive, lots of flavors, and it really did speak of the Nebbiolo grape. I enjoyed this wine more than most of the Langhe Nebbiolos or Nebbiolo d’Albas that we’ve tried. I certainly think part of this owes to the extra few years in bottle. But I suspect that another element may well be the location of the appellation and the quality of Antoniolo’s wines. It would be wonderful to try some of their single-vineyard bottlings, or even other vintages of this same bottling.
Apparently Gattinara (and Ghemme too) wines do very well in hotter vintages, and so this would be a great wine to seek out in those years when Barolo and Barbaresco are adversely affected by the heat. As I mentioned, I’ve also seen the 2000 vintage of this same wine, and this was supposed to be a great vintage for Gattinara, so this may be a bottle to pick up and try.
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La Spinetta Langhe Nebbiolo 2005
We’ve all seen the studies that demonstrate that people most make their purchasing decisions based on a wine’s label, rather than on knowing anything about its contents. When it comes to this wine, and La Spinetta wines in general, I have to admit that I succumb to this same approach. I love the labels on La Spinetta wines. They’re so attractive in their simplicity, and the label for this wine is a case in point. A deep, dark red paper; a thick black border runs around the label with red-gold letters spelling La Spinetta along each side; and then at the top of the label the year, underneath their characteristic drawing of a rhinocerous (from an Albrecht Durer print), and underneath that the words Langhe Nebbiolo. I even like the font they use. This isn’t a flashy label, but is instead one whose elegant simplicity really grabs me.
I’ve been drawn to their wines since first seeing and tasting their Barbera d’Asti at Amherst Coffee several years ago. With my recent fascination with Piedmont wines and Nebbiolo in particular, when I saw this bottle I decided to give it a shot.
La Spinetta produces their wines uses largely modernized methods. They employ rotofermenters during the 7-8 days of initial fermentation. The rotofermenters draw more color out of the wine in a shorter time than traditional methods of letting the wine ferment in tanks or botti. Following this the wine is transferred to all new medium-toasted French oak where the wine resides for 12 months before being transferred to stainless steel tanks where it rests for 2 months before bottling. These are common methods these days for handling grapes that normally convey a lot of tannin to the wine when produced using traditional methods. Using these methods, the wines obtain deep color and maximum flavor from the grapes while leaving more of the tannin behind. The French oak adds a new dimension to the wine and helps to further soften the tannins.
Needless to say these methods and the wines that they produce generated a lot of controversy in the wine world, and in Piedmont in particular. But realistically speaking these kinds of wine are here to stay, along with the methods that produce them. For two reasons in particular. Firstly, the wines are very approachable young, and often have more depth of flavor (even if some of this depth is made up of flavors drawn from the barrels). Secondly, these methods provide the winemaker with the ability to produce great wines with greater consistency than traditional methods. For instance, there is significantly less risk of oxidation from long fermentation, a flaw which may be remedied to some degree during long aging, but more often simply produces flawed wine.
In the case of La Spinetta’s Langhe Nebbiolo these methods have produced a wine that is very appealing and enjoyable to drink at this relatively young age. The wine is dark, purplish red, somewhat lighter at the rim. The nose is enticing. Vibrant medium-red fruits (currants, plums, raspberries), a hint of reduced sugar syrup, and a thread of vanilla. The palate is rife with bright fruit flavors – raspberries and strawberries. A layer of acidity really makes the flavors sparkle at first sip. These flavors gradually give way to softer, fruit compote flavors. You can definitely taste the effect of the barrels here. Soft, slightly velvety vanilla, strawberries, plums, and cherries combine together to really cote the palate. The flavors here are not as bright, instead that brightness and acidity has given way to very soft flavors. Almost like raspberry flavored whip cream. And these are the flavors that carry through on the medium-length finish, which walks away with the impression of whipped cream, strawberries, and plums, and only the barest hint of acidity.
This wine is a very nice drinking wine. In contrast to the Elio Grasso Langhe Nebbiolo that we tried recently I don’t think that this provides much showcase to the Nebbiolo grape itself. The effect of the barrel-aging is quite strong and I think takes away somewhat from the wine’s performance. I like this wine very much, but I don’t find it to be particularly intriguing or exciting. I don’t think I’m any sort of luddite in terms of wine, ardently favoring traditionalist producers over more modernist ones (see Edward Behr’s articles on wine in Art Of Eating for examples of this approach). But I do find more to value in wines that strive to let the terroir and grape(s) come through in the finished product, despite the inconsistencies, etc., that producing such a wine may entail. While I appreciate the reasoning behind La Spinetta’s production methods, I do believe they serve to somewhat homogenize the final product.
In any event, when I eventually run across a bottle of La Spinetta’s Barbera d’Asti I’ll still not hesitate to pick one up and give it a shot. If nothing else, I still think the labels are just so very.
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Elio Grasso Langhe Nebbiolo 2007
Langhe is a DOC in the Piedmont region of Italy that consists of the Langhe Hills surrounding the city of Alba, with most of the vineyards located east of the Tanaro River. Many of the vineyards overlap the Barolo, Barbaresco, and Roero DOCs. In the case of a grape being named following the “Langhe” (as with this Langhe Nebbiolo) the wine must contain 100% of the named varietal. Thus, this wine from Elio Grasso is 100% Nebbiolo.
This wine arrived on our doorstep as a product of my recent fascination with not just wines from Piedmont, but the Nebbiolo grape in particular. For instance, we recently tasted a Roero from Azienda Agricola Matteo Correggio that we enjoyed a great deal. Wines from the Roero DOCG must contain 95-98% nebbiolo, where the grape produces a wine that is a bit more fruit forward than those from the Langhe area, and whose tannins are much softer, allowing the wine to be drunk much younger than Nebbiolo-based wines from the Langhe. Interesting, the varietal that makes up the other 2-5% in Roero wines is Arneis, more commonly used for making whites in the Langhe region, and whose cultivation in the Roero hills dates back to the 15th century (maybe the requirement is an ode to history more than a beneficial blending component).
So that bottle of Roero was a good chance to experience a particular expression of the nebbiolo grape, whose cultivation is unique to Italy and at its most expressive when grown in Piedmont. The nebbiolo grape is a notably difficult grape for growers to cultivate, which is a large part of why it largely unique to Piedmont. It is late-ripening and very sensitive to adverse vintage conditions such as undue amounts of rain, too much cold or hot weather, etc. In fact, its cultivation can be so difficult that most Barolo and Barbaresco producers will not produce Barolo or Barbaresco denominated wines in a bad vintage year. Instead, they’ll devote their production to Langhe-denominated wines or other regional DOCs, such as Barbera d’Alba, Dolcetto d’Asti, etc.
Anyhow, on to this wine. Elio Grasso are both growers and vintners based in Monforte d’Alba. They’ve been producing the Langhe Nebbiolo bottling since 1987. The vineyards are situated on south-facing slopes at 350-380 meters and consist of limestone-based soils. The grapes are picked by hand in the first 10 days of October, fermented in stainless steel tanks for 7-8 days and then aged for 6-7 months in stainless steel. The 2007 vintage was released somewhat recently, earlier this Fall.
The wine is garnet-colored, with a nice plush purple hue at the rim and a good amount of depth to the color. The nose is delicate, with hints of red fruits, menthol, and tobacco. The palate consists of tart cherries and a nicely mouth-coating sweetness balanced with a distinct acidity. What’s interesting is that the flavor speaks to me more of fruit skin, than actual fruit. Cherry skin, raspberry seeds, apple skins. The fruit flavors carry through on the finish, compounded by some mint, and made lively by the refreshing acidity. The tannins are noticeable but moderate, and I actually think that they lend a certain vibrancy to the wine.
On the whole I like this wine very much. Last night we had a Dolcetto d’Alba that was quite nice, but this wine I find to more enjoyable on account of its intriguing flavors. Instead of being as fruit-forward and easy-access as the Dolcetto was (and as wines from the dolcetto grape normally are), this wine caused you to think more as you drank it, to seek out descriptors for what you were tasting and to want another sip to help you focus in on that elusive flavor. The wine is not super-complex, but definitely complex enough to offer some real food-for-thought.
I think this was a great wine to savor through an evening, and to be happy that you could have a second glass of. I’d highly recommend it – with the caveat that it, and perhaps nebbiolos in general, are not necessarily a wine for everyone. That being said, for myself who tends to be intellectually motivated to try different drinks, this wine was a real pleasure.
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