My Barbaresco Waterloo, May 10

May 10

My Barbaresco Waterloo

On every one of these trips there is a day of reckoning- where fatigue and jet lag combine with other circumstances to make it extremely long and trying.
Today was that day.
First of all there were sixty-some hot off the bottling line 2008 Barbareschis from Neive and Trieso to deal with.  Now, the 2007s tasted last year were disappointing for their excessive ripeness and boring homogeneity. The opposite was true, I think, in 2008, where the wines are much leaner, more attenuated and just plain a bloody chore to drink. In fact, for the first time at Nebbiolo Prima, I declined to take notes on some. The winemakers themselves very much like the vintage but they are either over-anxious to sell them or else deluding themselves.
These were tough wines to taste and evaluate- it was as hard a day as I've had tasting wine.  Yesterday's delicately balanced wines from Barbaresco became today's pushy, hard wines from Neive. Treiso, usually the source of the prettiest wines in the DOCG seemed not to fare any better.
This is not to say, of course, that you should entirely write off 2008 for Barabaresco- I may be proved totally wrong and the winemakers right if the wines fatten up and grow into their greenish tannins and high acids.  This isn't science, it's a sort of alchemy and, over the years, I've found Barbaresco harder to evaluate than virtually any other wine.
Still, as I say when I talk later about Barolo, choose producer over either vineyard or vintage and you probably won't go wrong. But read the notes first!

A word about the 2006 Riservae....we tasted about two dozen and I am hard pressed to make too many generalizations about them. Some still showed a fair bit of oak which only works as a complexing agent if there is enough backing fruit- that happened a few times but, on the whole, these were pretty severe wines too. I will reserve judgement until I see what happens to them once they are released. 2006 is a very fine vintage in Barbaresco but there is far less consensus as to what style Riserva should be....I do mention a few below.

It should also be noted that the day's session ended with six Baroli from Novello, my best being the juicy

2007 Abbona Marziano Terio Ravera and
2007 Elvio Cogno Ravera

In the meantime, here are a few  that I believed were the most promising of the day's haul:

2008 Ceretto Barbaresco Bricco Asili Bernardot: oaky, spicy and briary but also was one of the few where there was enough fruit to fill it out. Complete ***

2008 Francone Barbaresco I Patriarchi: burned earth,violets, spice, cherry confit....an extravagantly earthy wine from a producer new to me. ***

2008 Monteribaldi Barbaresco Palazzina: Another Neive wine that showed oak but had the fruit underneath to sustain the aggressive tannin. ***

2008 Oddero Barbaresco Gallina: tannic with ferrous and blood showing now, but really has the stuffing. This is becoming my favorite producer in the region as everything they do is consistently spot on.

2006 Castello di Verduno Barbaresco Rabaja Riserva: what's not to like here? Big, broad and polished. This winery is very good.

2006 Nada Giuseppe Barbaresco Casot Riserva: pretty and balanced, shows some oak but the fruit sustains it.


Following the tasting, with an eye towards regaining my fighting spirit for the Baroli to come, I declined the buffet lunch and had a pizza and a most-welcome beer with Michael, a mate who has been at Premier Cru in the East Bay nearly as long as I have been at PRIMA, and had a bit of a rest before driving over to Oddero in Santa Maria di La Morra for what proved to be the saving grace of the entire day, a vertical tasting of the Oddero's fantastic Baroli, including the transcendent 1964 that reminded me of why I make these sorts of exhaustive forays in the first place.

The Odderos (currently run by Mariacristina and her niece Mariavittoria, though papa Alberto is still active) have been making fabulous wines from their Santa Maria property since 1878.  Their's is an impressive estate making not only Barolo from their home Pieve Santa Maria property but they also own vines in Roggeri and Brunate (the highest part) in La Morra and several other important sites, notably Bussia Soprana, Villero and Vignarionda. We sat down in their beautifully rustic cantina (Cristina's decorative flourishes are everywhere) to a flight of wines meant to show the Oddero style, one that remains consistent (iron fist in an iron fist?) throughout a most varied group of vineyards:

2007 Oddero Barolo: A beautiful 2007 that shows juicy freshness and lovely pure fruit. Not sure of the price yet but it will be a hero in our restaurant.

1997 Oddero Barolo Mondoca di Bussia Soprana (magnum): a show-stopper that just gushed cherry-confit but shows the Oddero's very structured side as well. Hold longer if you can.

1978 Oddero Barolo: Still a powerhouse....they didn't bottle single vineyard wines in those days and this is the best of everything, iodine, tar, violets......

1964 Oddero Barolo: I don't 'rate' wines but this was as close to a 100 point Barolo as I've ever had! Perfectly mature, immaculately balanced, soft (but still with lively tannin) with all kinds of exotic and alluring things going on!

Dinner was, well, odd.  The group had been arbitrarily broken up into dinners at various spots around the area and while some dined much closer, I drew a shorter straw and joined a score of assorted German journalists at I Cacciatori, a very traditional osteria in Monteu Roero, some 40 minutes away. I am not complaining, by the way, and the most bland food in Piemonte is still pretty damned good, but I found myself in a narrow, very pink, room with all Italian speakers, including a fluent-Italian speaking Japanese journalist who refused to help me out when I asked him in Japanese to help me communicate something I wanted to say in Italian. In any event, the food was perfunctory (delicate zucchini flowers baked into a bland fritttata, Spinach and Castelmagno Risotto, Stinco di Vitello) the wine much so as well, and that lethal combination of a long day, jet lag and frustration really set in. It was only when I went to the bathroom towards the end of the meal that I discovered a small group of American confederates from my group stashed in another dining room. They had been there the whole time! Anyway, I was happy for Tuesday to end, take another Ambien and root for the 2007 Baroli to rock my world.