TN: 2013 Barolos tasted blind: Oddero, E Grasso, F Rinaldi, Ratti, Germano and more

My monthly tasting group tasted eight 2013 Barolos last night. My goal was to explore two themes – particular vineyards and villages as well as winemaking styles. The structure was inspired partly by the recent Regions of Barolo thread and partly by the view of one member of the group that Rocche dell’Annunziata in La Morra is underrated (even if it suffers from a number of poor producers) and that the famous (and very large) Cannubi in Barolo is overrated.

Hence, I picked two Cannubis and two Rocche dell’Annunziatas, plus two wines from Serralunga and one from Monforte.

Plus we had more modernists (avowed or otherwise) than usual.

In addition, I was trying to avoid duplicating wines that were included in the big Jancis Robinson/Chambers Street tasting of 43 ‘13s in October (notes posted here), which I attended with Gray Newman, who is in the group that met last night.

So a caveat: This was not an attempt to select greatest hits. Plus, a number of big-name '13s haven’t arrived yet. Oh, and we have a budget.

Quick take-aways:

• The vintage largely lives up to its hype. The wines are nicely ripe without being over the top.
• The Serralunga wines stood out for their structure.
• There is a lot of BS about the use of barriques. (More on that later.)
• As often happens, the most approachable wine comes out on top.

For you “where are the points” folks, I’ll skip to the bottom line and return later with explanations and detailed notes.

My rankings and scores on day 1 (yesterday):

1. Rocche Costamagna – Rocche dell’Annunziata [La Morra] ($40 – 93+ points)
2. Ettore Germano - Prapò [Serralunga] ($58 – 93 points)
3. Francesco Rinaldi – Cannubi [Barolo] ($56 – 91++ points)
4. Elio Grasso - Gavarini - Vigna Chiniera [Monforte] ($76 – 88 at first, then 91+ points)
5. Oddero – Barolo [blend from La Morra near Santa Maria and Bricco Fiasco in Castiglione] ($45 – 90+ points)
6. E. Pira (Chiara Boschis) - Cannubi [Barolo] ($99 – 89 points)
7. Schiavenza – Cerretta [Serralunga] ($50 – 88? points)
8. Renato Ratti - Barolo - Rocche dell’Annunziata [La Morra] ($89 – ??? points - more oak than grape flavors)

The group’s rankings:

1. Rocche Costamagna – Rocche dell’Annunziata ($40 – 1st by a wide margin)
2. Elio Grasso - Gavarini - Vigna Chiniera ($76)
   The next three were closely grouped:
3. E. Pira (Chiara Boschis) - Cannubi ($99)
4. Francesco Rinaldi – Cannubi ($56)
5. Renato Ratti - Rocche dell’Annunziata ($89)
6. Schiavenza – Cerretta ($50 – lots of scores in the middle)
   The last two were closely grouped:
7. Oddero – Barolo ($45)
8. Ettore Germano - Prapò ($58 – 8th, not far behind the Oddero but for different reasons; somewhat polarizing, including two 2nd places, including mine, and at least three last places)

My rankings on day 2 (today):

1. Rocche Costamagna – Rocche dell’Annunziata (93 points for current drinking)
2. E. Pira (Chiara Boschis) - Cannubi (92 points if you’re OK with a little oak)
3. Elio Grasso - Barolo Gavarini - Vigna Chiniera (91++ points if you’re OK with a little oak)
4. Ettore Germano - Prapò (90? points if you’re OK with a lot of reduction)
5. Francesco Rinaldi – Cannubi (90? points with some questions about the depth of the fruit)
6. Oddero – Barolo (89 points with some questions about the depth of the fruit)
7. Schiavenza – Cerretta (88 points, if your OK with dense, rustic wines)
8. Renato Ratti - Rocche dell’Annunziata (87 points if you generally prefer traditional Barolo; 60 if you are a rabid traditionalist; 92+ if you don’t really care if the wine tastes like Barolo was meant to taste [sic] and judge wines without reference to their origins)

Needless to say, tasting young Barolos is always a challenge, given their tannins. I decanted half of each bottle into a pouring bottle two hours or so ahead of the tasting (I have a set of identical bottles for this purpose so bottle shape doesn’t give anything away), and poured the balance of each wine into the pouring bottle right before we began. Thus the wines had some substantial airing time. We have cold meats, pasta, vegetables and cheese to refresh our palates and show the wines in their best light.

Tonight I retasted the refrigerated leftovers – about a third of a bottle in most cases – with food. With serious young red wine, that second-day tasting of the refrigerated remains is almost always revealing.

Stay tuned for more detailed notes.

My notes are based on my day-2 scores and rankings, which I think are more meaningful for these wines.

Info about the vineyards and winemaking in italics.

1. Rocche Costamagna – Rocche dell’Annunziata [La Morra]
(93 points for current drinking)
A shortish maceration (“at least two weeks”) followed by two years in large casks.

As so often happens, the most approachable wine does best. But I can’t knock this wine. It had classic nebbiolo scents, which to me means rose hips and dried strawberries. Others thought they picked up a bit of oak on day 1, and I thought there might be a bit when I retasted tonight. Who cares. This is elegant and beautifully balanced with a lot of depth. Will it age as well as some of the others? I doubt it, but it is a very good wine. My score is based on the wine today and in the near future.
Note: At $40, this was the cheapest wine.

2. E. Pira (Chiara Boschis) - Cannubi [Barolo]
(92 points if you’re OK with a little oak)
Chiara Boschis was one of the leading modernists in the 1990s – and one of the few female winemakers in the region. She adopted shorter maceration times and barriques. The winery web site says this wine spends two years in 100% new French barriques – about as intense an oak regimen as any Barolo maker.

But that didn’t show at all yesterday. Just ripe dark cherries. The nose on day 1 was a little less precise than most, and tonight I picked up something that seemed like reduction but which might have been oak char. But that was not dominating. This is not in any way an oak bomb.
Tonight this showed great depth and concentration, with fairly hard tannins, but not out of proportion to the rest of what’s there. This has the elegance you’d expect from Cannubi.
How does she hide all that oak?
Boschis’s plot in Cannubi appears to be in a prime southeast-facing portion near the top of the slope.
At $99, this was the most expensive.

3. Elio Grasso - Gavarini - Vigna Chiniera [Monforte]
(91++ points if you’re OK with a little oak)
Grasso’s ’11 and ’12 showed a great deal of new oak in blind tastings in this group two years ago and last year, respectively, though the estate claims to age the single vineyards exclusively in 2,500-liter botte. Ken Vastola in other tasting also picked up oak in those wines.

The nose was somewhat muted on this yesterday. Today some sweet oaky scents emerged but nothing like the ’11 or ’12. And there was some good piercing (think eucalyptus piercingness), classic nebbiolo scents. Great grip, but elegant and with a nice sweetness on the palate. A touch of what appears to be oak is there in the mid-palate and at the back, with its sweetness, but the wine overall is beautifully balanced. This is more elegant than one might expect from Monforte. Definitely somewhere in the middle ground in terms of concentration and structure.
4. Ettore Germano - Prapò [Serralunga]
(90? points if you’re OK with a lot of reduction)
Macerated 40 days, they told me on a visit last year, followed by two years in 2,000-liter casks.

The odd thing here is a powerful reduction – a skunkiness – that I can’t ever recall encountering in Barolo. I noted a little reduction when I visited in August 2016, a day after the wine was bottled, but it dominates now and it turned off much of the group. That dissipated only a little last night in the glass, and was still very conspicuous tonight.
Behind that is a dense, chewy wine, with lots of ripe fruit. The density and the reduction led me to guess the Schiavenza, which usually makes no-prisoners-taken Serralunga wines. If you can get past the reduction, this has Serralunga written all over it.

5. Francesco Rinaldi – Cannubi [Barolo]
(90? points with some questions about the depth of the fruit)
From the Cannubi Boschis subpart of the larger Cannubi facing east-southeast. 20-30-day maceration; minimum of three years in large casks, according to the website, but it’s hard to see how it could be since it’s been released and it is required to spend a year in bottle.

Lovely feminine scents – floral, with the rose hips of nebbiolo. Firm, great tension of fruit and acid/tannin structure, but with somewhat less depth than most. Classic, elegant Cannubi or just a tad short on stuffing? I’m not sure.
This was pretty much unchanged on day 2. Perhaps the elegance will win in the end, but I have some question about the depth here relative to the others.

6. Oddero – Barolo normale [La Morra/Castiglione]
(89 points with some questions about the depth of the fruit)
Perhaps it’s unfair to compare this normale with the cru bottlings, but this showed very well in the Chambers/Robinson tasting (along with Burlotto’s Acclivi blend). And Pietro Oddero told me on a visit last year that this is not younger vines but simply their classic blend, based on vineyards where their holdings are too small to make a cru bottling. The fruit comes from a vineyard adjacent to the winery on the lower slopes of La Morra, plus fruit from the top-flight Bricco Fiasco in Castiglione, not far away.

Celery seed/cooked celery on the nose (which I like), along with nebbiolo rose hips and dried berries. Very floral on day 2. “Serious but elegant,” I wrote. Overshadowed a bit by the depth of the others here, but a very good wine and good value at $45.

7. Schiavenza – Cerretta [Serralunga]
(88 points at this stage, if you’re OK with dense, rustic wines)
The winery name means sharecropper. (Schiavo means slave in Italian.) Fermentation/maceration: 15-20 days in cement cisterns. Aged in large casks. Harvested according to the cycles of the moon, according to the website. (Not according to the ripeness of the grapes??)
The Dunn Howell Mountain of the tasting.
I was disappointed with this, as I’ve liked a lot of Schiavenza wines. I loved what I tasted in a visit in 2005 and I nearly single-handedly chugged a bottle of their 2012 Prapo last year when I was in the area.
Deep, rich black cherries on the nose, plus floral notes like you get in talcum powder. More ripe black cherries on day two with a sweetness that almost seems like oak, but probably isn’t.
In the mouth, there is tremendous grip. The tannins take a hold of your mouth and won’t let go. More grip than the fruit will bear? I’m not sure, but this is the least approachable of these wines today.
Hard to tell if this will evolve well in my lifetime. Hence the low ranking both days (and the group’s 6th place). I expected an extracted, tannic wine, but hoped for one whose long-term potential was easier to glimpse.

8. Renato Ratti - Rocche dell’Annunziata [La Morra]
(87 points if you generally prefer traditional Barolo; 60 if you are a rabid traditionalist; 92+ if you don’t really care if the wine tastes like Barolo was meant to taste [sic] and judge wines without reference to their origins)
This wine poses the question: How do expectations feed into one’s assessment?

First, my notes:
On the nose: “Oodles of sweet oak. Oak, oak and oak.” A suggestion of nebbiolo on day 2.
On the palate: “Oak, oak and oak, sweet. American oak-like – coconut.” Nice ripe fruit underneath.
Finish: “Oak just won’t quit.”
Overall: “WTF?”
But here’s the real kicker: Although Ratti was in the forefront of the modernist movement, and macerates for a very short 7-10 days, the winery website claims this is aged in 2,500 and 5,000 liter casks.
Yea. Right.
Many of us ranked this 8th simply because it was such an outlier. It certainly doesn’t reflect the grape. It brought to mind the comment a traditionalist-favoring Italian friend of mine once made about a Pio Cesare Barolo: “The end of Christian civilization as we know it.”
On the other hand, this is a really good wine judged without respect to where it’s from. Viewed that way, this would be
tied for second place for me.

How to judge and score this wine becomes almost a theological issue.

Interesting summary. Particularly as we stayed at Rocche Costamagna recently, tasted the wines, and thought they were fine but not quite up to the level of some others. But then, I still don’t understand Barolo

Not a producer anyone would normally place in the top tier. As I said, I think it showed well because it’s more approachable, probably due to the location (lower slopes of La Morra) and shorter maceration. But is genuinely a nice wine. I only wrote down four other people’s scores – folks I normally tend to correlate with. Among the five of us it had two 1st places, two 2nd places and a 6th place. And the 6th place guy had a nasty cold and couldn’t smell much.

One member of the group who ranked it first also stayed at the property last year. He and his wife intensely disliked the wines and she asked facetiously if their toilet flushed into the winery. He laughed when the wines were unveiled.

This is the wonderful thing about blind tastings.

Found the E Pira Cannubi for $73 at Grand Vin Wine Merchants a couple months ago, quite the deal. Glad to hear it showed well.

Is Pira so expensive because they need to pay for the barrels?

Robert - That’s a very good price. The lowest nationally is $87, according to W-S.

Originally I was going to buy it at Zachy’s for $94 – a non-sale price that was the lowest in the NYC area. Then they upped it to $115. Those people are so irritating with their pricing games.

Markus - Until some of the traditional producers ran up in price in recent years, there was a rough correlation between barriques and price.

Certainly impressive by Rocche Costamagna, and being able to grab a bottle young with some confidence perhaps makes it a great cellar defender. Maybe I’ll try one of the brace of 2010s I have sooner rather than later. IIRC they were going for £20 a bottle at the time, so I was happy to take a punt.

Love the irony of the blind tasting comment!

Thanks for your notes. I am pretty sure I’ve read somewhere that Chiara Boschis no longer uses 100% new barrique (she still uses barrique but perhaps a smaller % of new). Regardless, I have never found her wines to be roasted or weighed down by new wood.

John, this is what the Skurnik site says:

The Cannubi vineyard spans approximately 2.5 hectares and is situated at 300 meters in the village of Barolo. From a 0.7 hectare plot within the Cannubi vineyard, with south-southwest facing vines, the soils here are well-draining sandy clay marl with Sant’Agata limestone. Fermentation of this 100% Nebbiolo took place in stainless steel tanks with frequent pumping over. > The wine was then aged in lightly toasted French oak (1/3 new, 1/3 second use, 1/3 three+ uses) for 24 months before aging an additional year in bottle. > 800 cases produced.

https://www.skurnik.com/sku/barolo-cannubi-e-pira-chiara-boschis-7/

Thanks, David. That sounds much more plausible. I was relying on the winery’s website, which says:

Aged 2 years in new french barriques; 1 year refinement in bottle.

It likely hasn’t been updated.

As I noted, the F. Rinaldi’s aging description doesn’t make sense, highlighting that the wineries aren’t always fastidious about their sites. The Italian portion of Pira/Boschis’s site returns errors when you click on the link for the individual wines.

I retasted the remains tonight. Most did not change appreciably, but the reduction finally blew off the Germano. The E. Pira began to show a little oak. The Ratti oak just wouldn’t let give up. Never experienced coconut on nebbiolo before.

[Edited for typo to avoid Ken’s jumping on me. ]

Great evening and notes, I really admire how much effort you put into preparing for the tasting. I’m really curious to see discussion of the ‘13s from the Vinous event in a few months (which, I’m sad to say I am not attending).

Some people have Monthly book club meetings and others taste very young Nebbiolo. I prefer the latter!

This makes more sense. Chiara is a regular at La Festa and it is evident that her wines are getting less and less oaky. At the same time, better and better.

Not true. Georgio Rivetti does what he calls “200% new oak”. One year in 100% new French barriques, then transferred to a 2nd year in 100% brand new French barriques. After this, there is almost no taste of Nebbiolo left in the wine.

In his spare time, John writer tomes for your book club:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003E8AJXI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Yes, this reminded me of the '01, which I recall as very elegant and balanced. Now if she can just get her website info up to the quality of her wines.

A Dominique Laurent buddy, eh? I didn’t know that.

What do you know about Ratti? Their claim to age in botte seems like complete bunk based on this tasting. The Rocche d’A tastes like they added essence of American oak.

Lucky to have a 2013 Rocche Costamagna bottle. Will open it tomorrow.