Giulia Negri - new generation Piedmont

Last week I noticed a new arrival at my wine dealer Pinard de Picard and it immediately caught my attention. They talked about a promising 27 year old winemaker from Piedmont, Giulia Negri. As I love Piedmont wines and as I am always curious what the young generation is doing I ordered a bottle.


2016 Giulia Negri „La Tartufaia” Pinot Nero, Langhe

WOW…what an elegance. Very charming with silky tannins, sublime fruit, light floral notes and velvety finish. In addition a lovely freshness and depth. Needs air, best on Day 2.

Based on this stylistic there is no doubt that she has a certain connection/love for Burgundy. I made some research and I found out that she worked with Louis-Michel Liger-Belair in the past. I am convinced and will also order her Barolo and Chardonnay in the coming days.

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Salute,
Martin

I have her 2013 Barolo Serradenari on tap for this weekend. Will be heads up against 2013 Alessandria Monvigliero (which I had once before and thought was excellent, hoping for a similar showing).

Please post some impressions.

2013 Negri Serradenari
Double decant with an hour of air in the decanter, no food.
Nose: Tight nose but with aggressive swirling, it is floral nose with juicy dark red berries. Faint green streak. Faint wood spice. Faint vanilla wood.
Palate: Red strawberry, Black raspberry, faint green strawberry/herbal note. A finessed wine with medium acidity. Texturally very pleasant: clean, viscous, but not quite silky. Definitely packs a slightly sappy, dark red fruited punch on a medium bodied frame… Medium+ power on a medium frame.
Structure: Very structured. Mouth drying tannins on the swallow. Tannins are not rustic, but are very grippy and drying. There is sweet red raspberry/cherry fruit on the finish that survives the drying finish.

At dinner later this felt more closed. 92. I can see others giving this a 91.

Traditionally made and too young to drink, but approachable. Didn’t strike me as a 20YR wine, but I thought this was good value and a wine I definitely want to try again in 5 years. Definitely going to seek out 2016s, young vines that will have a couple more years. Similar to style of wine that I have recently enjoyed ('16 Duroche Lavaux, '16 Sottimano Pajore), not a side-by-side, but would say this is lighter/less concentrated/simpler than the those 2.

2013 Alessandria Monvigliero
Same treatment but only tried at dinner, 4-5 hours after opening.
Nose: Shut down, can’t get anything.
Palate: Muted sour red strawberry, some dried rose, some dried bay leaf. Felt it got better with time.
What happened here? Closed down? Too much air? Restaurant environment not as good? I have a lot more of these… 91-92

So there was something similar about these bottles that I couldn’t put my finger on. Both traditionally made, similar weights, price points… and then I realized at the restaurant side-by-side these two wines have the same exact script / bottle design.
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Thank you for the notes! The score seems particularly generous in view of what you write…
By the way the label design changed: all her bottles, including Barolos now have a label similar to the one shown above for the pinot nero.

It is fair, I could have scored the Monvigliero more 91 as opposed to 92, but I do recall a prior bottle quite vividly, and for now an average of the two scores is reasonable to me (I had scored a prior bottle 93-94). I thought the Giulia was better than a 91. Hitting the exact point sometimes (all the time?) is difficult. Below is how I score, for whatever it is worth.

95 = Outstanding / Top 5-10% of wines I generally consume
93 = Very Good / Nothing glaringly wrong
91 = Good / Enjoyable, with glaring deficiencies
89 = OK, an average wine / good table wine

That’s certainly a generous scale! (Did you mean with no glaring deficiencies?) Your 89 seems to equate to something less than 80 the way most people use the 100-point scale.

By comparison, the Parker/WA scale is defined as:

96-100:
An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase, and consume.

90 - 95:
An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.

80 - 89:
A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.

70 - 79:
An average wine with little distinction except that it is a soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.

60 - 69:
A below average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor, or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.

50 - 59:
A wine deemed to be unacceptable.

I am not scoring to Parker and I find my scores are similar to most people on CT. A few months ago I came up with this range with the intentional goal of finding personal words to articulate a wine, while being in a reasonable zone of correlation with CT scores (which is an intentional goal of mine to increase the utility of the scores and make sense for myself from CT scores – I am not in the camp that CT scores are useless). As it pertains to the Negri, I have had worse wines than the Negri that people score at similar range to the Negri, so I don’t feel I have materially over scored it. Maybe I missed it by a point, not but I don’t think I missed it by 5. I would be very surprised to suddenly see 80-85 points scores for the wine on CT, so I don’t think most people would score it there. As it pertains to words I gave for the scores I use, they are personal frames of reference (my thought of a good table wine or the top 10% of wines I drink, by definition, is a very personal reference point). I would like more dispersion in the scores generally, to the downside, but its not how I find CT folks score, so there is a lot of compression I think in 90-92; my rating scale gives me a little more dispersion on CT for 87-89 I think where I may be 1-2 points below other scores there (thus arguably underscoring, not overscoring).

Which just goes to underscore the challenges and relative lack of utility in scores. If we aren’t all following a standard, then each person has to understand everyone else’s personal scoring system. Which means points are only useful to that individual, which I guess is something.

HI Martin,

I met with Giulia last January and tasted her Barolo 2015 line-up at the Grandi Langhe presentation in Alba. I was impressed. Purity and elegance with well manicured tannins.

I will be able to report on the current releases later this week after a visit with Giulia, though she will come over tomorrow for dinner so I might have some inside information then.

The wines are very refined and elegant, and what I tasted from barrel last year certainly seemed to be the best wines I’ve tasted from her over the past 3 years. She is maturing very quickly as a winemaker, has definite goals for her wines and is driven by a Burgundian sensibility, though producing wines that can only be Piemontese. Even her Pinot Nero expresses Piemontese terroir, as it should. A producer to watch for sure.

Good to see that you ALL share my impressions.

Kermit Lynch listing 2015 Barolo “Serradenari”, Giulia Negri $85

I’ve tasted Barolo La Tartufaias 2007, 2009 and 2010. Wasn’t thrilled about the 2009, but the 2007 and 2010 were quite good. All in all the style is not really my cup of tea, since the wines are a bit too polished and oaky for my taste, but nevertheless pretty good for that burgundian-modernist style.

The Pinot Nero 2010 was quite big and clunky for a Pinot Noir, lacking freshness and elegance, but still an enjoyable effort for a firm and muscular Langhe red. Perhaps not the most Burgundian example of varietal expression.

I would say that you should take into account that she is a very young winemaker and she started her own wines in 2012 or 2013? So, I would assume that you could see a learning curve and that the wines get better from vintage to vintage.

2012 or 2013? How is that possible if I’ve tasted her own wines from vintage 2007 onwards? :smiley:

To my understanding she has made her microcuvées on her own since 2007 or so, but she took over the full control of the winery and vineyard management in 2014.

I can imagine the wines might have gotten better, but AFAIK Negri hasn’t changed her winemaking style and I’m not that keen on the modernist style - be it she makes quite fine examples of the style. Of course, if the opportunity arises, I’d be happy to sample the wines to see into which direction they’ve gone over these few vintages I haven’t tasted them.

I guess wines should be spelt vines here, in that case it makes sense.

__“To my understanding she has made her microcuvées on her own since 2007 or so, but she took over the full control of the winery and vineyard management in 2014.”


Correct, I looked via Google.

I was surprised at pricing, which IMHO felt high… but perhaps that’s just the importer’s listed price.