Chambers Street teamed up with Jancis Robinson to sponsor a tasting of 43 Barolos from 2013 tonight at the Tribeca Grill. This was perhaps the best walk-around events I’ve ever been to – lots of wine, no need to elbow your way in, more than two and a half hours to taste, with good nibbles. Certainly a great bargain at $150 including food.
The payoff of events like this is you get a feel for overall vintage. The drawback is that 43 young Barolos take a toll on the palate, and in this setting, it’s hard to see how a wine evolves in the glass, and it’s hard to take notes. It definitely paid to retaste with a refreshed palate. Also, bottles that had been open a bit often showed better than freshly opened ones.
The best wines showed richness but great structure. A few showed some heat and VA. If the danger in 2012 was wines that were underripe and lacking in concentration, the risk in 2013 seems to be in the other direction.
The wines from Verduno and La Morra seemed to show better at this stage. Those areas tend to produce more approachable wines. But perhaps they were favored in 2013.
The wines were selected by Walter Speller, Robinson’s delightfully opinionated Italian specialist, and were provided by the Enoteca Regionale di Barolo. It was a good selection of producers but didn’t include any trophy wines.
My scores are conservative because most these wines are tough sledding at the moment – tight and tannic. Greg dal Piaz, who was there, said these were much more forthcoming when he tasted them in May.
Wines I particularly liked – most of them tasted at least twice over several hours:
Burlotto - Acclivi (a blend of their Verduno vineyards): fabulous floral nose, spicy, elegant; a good poor man’s substitute for the unobtainable Monvigliero. 92-ish for me
Oddero - Barolo (a blend of some pretty good vineyards where they don’t have enough vines to bottle a cru): Lovely, fruity, very approachable – less tannic than some. 90-ish.
Vajra - Bricco delle Viole: Quite taut on the first pour, but lots of fruit concentration underneath. Retrying it later there were intense floral notes on the nose. 92-ish.
Scarzello - Vigna Merenda - Sarmassa: Hard tannins at first, but this opened up. Returning near the end this was rich, ripe, full of fruit but with boatloads of structure. Greg d P was oohing and ahing over this. I agree. Old fashioned in the best sense. 92+ -ish.
Cogno - Ravera: Lots of concentration of fruit here, plus structure. 91-ish.
Cavalloto - Bricco Boschi: Outstanding! Focused, concentrated, with lots of fruit and grip. My wine of the evening. 93++ ish
Rivetto - Serralunga d’Alba: A producer I’m unfamiliar with, but this showed very well. Perfumed – sort of unusual for Serralunga. “Elegant with lots of grip,” I wrote. 91-ish.
Luigi Baudana - Cerretta (owned by Vajra): I’ve liked these wines since I first tasted them at Vajra in 2011. This is real Serralunga: dense, tannic, concentrated. But there’s a long, rich, fruit-filled finish. I wrote 91, but that’s probably stingy.
The tasting certainly confirmed my preference for the traditionalists. Some of the modern-style wines I wasn’t keen on:
Scavino - Monvigliero: rich, balanced, but without any detail; kind of muddy flavors; certainly no Monvigliero terroir speaking here
Silvio Grasso - Bricco Manzoni: dominated by oak, with oak tannins to boot
Conterno-Fantino - Sori Ginestra: hot, alcohol scents, also hot on the palate. Later some shoe polish VA showed up. Wood tannins at the back.
Parusso - Bussia: very odd vegetal nose; later this seemed like green oak, and there was a marked oaky taste
Prunotto - Bussia: strangely pale hue – almost rose like. This was particularly odd in a modern style wine. Some oak on the nose and in the mouth. This just didn’t seem like cru bottling quality.