I’ve been curious about the 2007 Barolo vintage, given the initial hype of the vintage but from what I can tell, a relative lack of enthusiasm since. So I pulled 6 bottles from storage and tasted them over the past week to try to get my own view on the vintage. This is a small sample size of the vintage, but here’s some thoughts:
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Unsurprisingly, I found greater textural richness / body than normal in all 6 of the wines.
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4 out of 6 wines I tasted were clearly marked by the vintage, in my opinion, in the aromatics and on the palate. Compared to cooler vintages of the same wines, these had darker than normal fruit tones, a bit less freshness / acidic energy, less aromatic & flavor complexity, and came across as a bit heavier than normal. They clearly traded freshness & complexity for greater richness.
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There are clearly some wines that transcended the vintage and combine greater richness, with most of the aromatic complexity and freshness they normally exhibit. In my tasting two fell into this category, the Vietti Rocche & G. Rinaldi Brunate Le Coste. These wines were spectacular, and came across as cool in tone, incredibly complex, and with an extra layer of richness on top. The '07 of these two is every bit as good as the cooler vintages, in my view. These two wines were dramatically different than the other 4 I’ve tasted, and while the Vietti Rocche & G. Rinaldi Brunate are often two of the top wines in any vintage, here the difference was greater than normal in my opinion.
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While I assume the wines are technically pretty tannic, the velvety texture / richness tends to bury the tannins, making these '07s approachable on the palate.
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Despite being a warm vintage, I think most of the better wines will age pretty well and need more time. I’m most confident about the Vietti & Rinaldi aging for multiple decades, but I think all the others I tasted will also improve for at least another 5-10+ years or so.
Overall, I thought all of these wines were very enjoyable, but given this was a small selection of some of the better-ranked wines of the vintage, the tasting suggests to me 2007 is not at the level of the recent more classic vintages, such as the surrounding years of 2006/2008. At least, there appears to be a high degree of variability, with some wines marked by heat and likely a small few that really benefitted.
I posted full notes on CT if anyone’s interested, but here is my rough ranking and impressions:
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Vietti Rocche (97): Nose is very fresh and lifted, with dark red to black fruit, purple/lavender tones, spices, espresso, exotic floral tones. Very rich, concentrated, and sweet fruit on the palate. Long, spicy finish. Tannins integrating well, great freshness on the palate with a lot of energy. Most complexity of any of these wines.
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G Rinaldi Brunate (96): “Coolest” toned wine of all I tasted. A very complex fruit profile on the nose, with dark red fruit alongside blue and purple tones, with a hard candy-like sweetness, alongside tobacco, menthol, and licorice. Richly textured but almost weightless on the palate, with minimal tannin. Striking level of inner sweetness to the dark red and purple toned fruit. High energy with a burst of acidity towards the finish.
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G. Mascarello Monprivato (94-95): Dark red to black cherry fruit, baking spices that are maybe a touch hot like cinnamon, licorice, dark floral tones, balsamic. Beautiful dark, spicy, sweet palate that is quite velvety in texture and very rich. Tannins almost covered up by the richness of the texture, emerging a bit at the end. Clearly warm in profile, but a pretty good level of acidity and freshness.
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B. Mascarello (93-94): The nose immediately suggests an uncharacteristically dark, exotic, hedonistic wine for Bartolo. Black cherry and plum fruit, licorice, sweet baking spices, and a hint each of dark chocolate, balsamic, earth. Very lush and velvety dark fruit and sweet spices on the palate. Tannins covered up by the density of the fruit, emerging a bit, and a touch grainy, towards the finish, with is dark and spicy. I didn’t get any noticeable actual sweetness on the palate (RS), as some prior reviewers have suggested, but it’s clearly a very unusual vintage for Bartolo.
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Vajra Bricco delle Viole (93-94): Black cherries, violets, menthol, licorice, sweet spices on the nose. Concentrated and youthful on the palate, with spicy dark red and blue fruit tones, violets, and licorice. Highly tannic and less elegant than BdV in recent vintages - the one wine where the tannins really stuck out - but it has a good amount of complexity in the fruit profile and I think it will age well.
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Elio Grasso Casa Mate (92-93): Dark red fruit, licorice, balsamic, tar, sweet spices on the nose. Richly textured on the palate with dark red fruit and balsamic tones, but less complex than the nose and some of the other wines, at least for now. Rich texture, hiding the tannins until they emerge and are noticeable at the back end. Comes across as clearly warm, lacking the acidity/freshness and complexity of the better vintages of Casa Mate. Aromatics are notably better than the rest of the wine at this stage.