For all you Langhe-heads, Greg dal Piaz is posting tasting notes on 2013 Barolos on the Simply Better Wines site. He’s already reviewed dozens of wines and is updating it regularly.
His overall take on the vintage is interesting – a bit of a counterweight to the rah-rah tone of some other critics (Robinson, Galloni) and the hype emanating from retailers. Greg’s take accords with the sense I got from producers when I was in the area a year ago. Some indicated that the vintage might have been a bit riper than ideal.
Here are excerpts from Greg’s overview:
2013 has produced some outstanding wines. The nature of the vintage is all about super ripe, fine grained tannins, lusciously sweet fruit, and spicy nuance. Both the tannins and the sweetness of fruit though seem to be the failings of the vintage as well.
The best wines have such remarkably finesse due to the fine tannins, and are elegant as well as firm, though nowhere near as masculine as the 2010s. This softness is the principal shortcoming of the vintage as well as quite a few wines are just too soft. They’re fun and delicious, but without backbone.
The sweetness of fruit in this vintage is also an issue. I don’t really look for luscious Barolo and don’t expect the particularly lush wines of the vintage to age that well. With time that lushness will fall away leaving wines that might lack depth, roundness, and nuance. It’s really very tough to say as I have never tasted wines like this at this stage of their lives, or any other for that matter.
While the heights of 2013 are stratospheric, the wines are not as classical as those of 2010, which, in a general sense I continue to prefer over this more recent vintage. But boy are there lots of outstanding wines! ….
2014 is better than you might be lead to believe. Not so much for the lesser varieties, though Barbera can be excellent, but for Barolo and Barbaresco in particular. Say tuned for more there as well!
Greg knows the Langhe and its producers as well as anyone and, across regions, he has one of the best palates I know, so I’m always interested to hear his views.
Nothwithstanding his reservations about the style of '13, he gives a lot of wines scores of 92-94, and Greg isn’t generally guilty of grade inflation.
He doesn’t distinguish between Barolo and Barbaresco. I’ll e-mail him and see if I can coax him to address that in his reviews or here.