I have a spattering of Spanna, Gattinara, and Ghemme from the 60’s and 70’s, and a couple from the late 50’s. I doubt they’ll need as much air time as their southern counterparts. I might open one for friends tonight. Your thoughts?
Thanks,
Warren
I drink a lot of these wines (non-Barolo/Barbaresco Piedmont nebbiolo/blends), about 150 over the last few years, and i usually open and decant in the morning. If the wine tastes and smells close to “ready” I will pour it back into the cleaned bottle and leave it open on the counter until dinner. If it is too thin or tart or musty, or appears brownish, I leave it in the decanter instead. This works for me, and in any case they are still very sturdy wines, I think that if the wine is sound there is little risk in airing it for 8-10 hours.
Cristiano Garella (winemaker at Sella, La Prevostura, Ioppa, Columbera & Garella, etc) was asked this question by Levi Dalton on his I’ll Drink to That podcast last year.
His answer is to pop and pour Alto Piemonte vintages up to 1958 and to decant wines from subsequent vintages through the 60s and 70s.
Thanks. That’s what I was thinking
Thank you Joe; I’ll have to track down that podcast. I wonder why he picked that cutoff year.
Cheers,
Warren
It’s a great interview and worth listening to in full, but the vintage discussion is at the very end if you want to skip to it.
He doesn’t go into great detail but, as I understood it, it relates to a decline of attentiveness in winemaking and a (long) string of tough vintages.