I don’t regret trying, but tasting this wine was a horrible experience. Bottle had good fill, cork was intact and came out in one piece, and even the color was promising. The nose was pretty funky, kind of metallic, but with a discernible wine-like smell. The flavor on the other hand was absolutely appalling: like rotting metal that coated every surface of my mouth and filled my sinuses with poison. The experience was so traumatizing that I immediately popped a '16 Produttori Barbaresco and gargled with it to get rid of the taste. That being said, how often do you have the opportunity to try a 54 yr old bottle of dolcetto? 100% worth the experience (unless I die later tonight).
Sounds like a case of classic old-school Piedmontese brett.
Meaning that some strains of brett don’t necessarily produce funk and spicy tones, but instead more metallic flavors - and they tend to appear only after a few decades of aging. Or then it might be that the funky brett notes evolve into these metallic tones over decades. I’ve had several heavily metallic wines and virtually all of them seem to hail from Piemonte. Lots of Gattinaras from the 1960’s and 1970’s have been so metallic that drinking them has been akin to sucking on rusted nails.
On the other hand, while I hate stereotyping grape varieties, am generally more optimistic about ageing less heralded wines, and because the ageing of a wine depends on so many, many different factors… I’d perhaps be inclined to say that, other than for science’s sake, for about 99% of Dolcetto anything over the 10-15-year mark is a very bold assumption.
1971 Marchesi di Barolo Langhe Dolcetto (Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Langhe DOC) 9/23/2018 BrunelloBob 90
Auction purchase. Short cork soaked through, like no one planned for it to be around this long. Knew this was still good on the nose–red fruit and earth. Significant red fruit and great length in the mouth. Amazing considering the age. 72 cl
Fascinating! I never really thought of trying to discern any subtleties of terroir to such a horrid tasting wine. But on second thought, this was undoubtedly the worst wine I’ve ever had, I never questioned why, but perhaps it’s the unique Piedmontese Brett. I went through an ill-advised phase of buying up old inexpensive bottles from Piedmont, and this bottle is telling me that I should start popping corks and forget about holding onto these any longer. I was holding them for a special occasion since they’re OLD, but no use in doing that. I’ll give you all an update about whether I discover any more metallic Brett.
Maybe you should try some aged Grignolino from a good source and a reliable producer. My own batting average with those very much suggests that, contrary to some perceptions, they can age in a very rewarding way.
I agree completely. For my taste Dolcetto loses something as it ages, without replacing it with anything worthwhile. I drink a ton of it, but always <3 years old.
Indeed. Sure, I’ve had “old” Dolcetto that had not fallen apart in any conventional sense. Sometimes, though, perhaps we are all, often understandably, simply so astounded by the fact that a wine we assume has already fallen to pieces is still relatively, or entirely, “together”, that we are tempted to attribute a value to it over and above the mere fact itself. A distinction to be drawn between “ageing without obviously falling apart” and truly meaningful ageing?
But then, of course, the whole thing still remains VERY subjective, there’s just no helping it.
(P.S. I do like some Dolcetto with a bit of age on it. Off the cuff, I think the best Ovada terroirs with old vines can be different and tend to do really well or even require a bit of age. Some bottlings from elsewhere spring to mind as well, like Marcarini’s Boschi di Berri, in some vintages).
No, nornally not. However, weirder things have happened.
I wonder if the wine here could be somewhat similar to a Barolo Chinato? It’s normally a style bottled as NV, but every now and then some producers make vintage Barolo Chinato.
If you Google “dolcetto amaro” or “Bersano dolcetto amaro,” you’ll find many vintages of this wine, and all are labeled “dolcetto amaro.”
That search also turns up 1968 and 1969 bottles of this that Chambers Street offered in the past, labeled as riserva amaro. FYI, they were priced at $18, so expectations plainly were not high (although I’ve had some wonderful amaros from the '60s).