I thought I’d seen a thread on this before, but couldn’t find it. If a winery is producing single vineyards at a significant markup to their normale (ie- a Barolo vs a Monvigliero), I think it’s reasonable to assume that in most cases they’re putting the better grapes into the single vineyard to help justify the higher pricing. My question then is, taking Barolo as an example, can you expect a 2016 F. Alessandria normale that now competes for grapes with the 2016 FA Monvigliero to perform as well as a 1960s Barolo from FA?
Not sure if this right example to use as on searching CT it looks like FA produced single vineyard bottlings in the 60s, but I think the question makes sense.
All depends on the producer and what he or she is trying to accomplish. Sometimes splitting things up into smaller quantities means they can raise prices. Other times maybe not. And a lot of times when the vintage isn’t considered the most outstanding ever, they put those single vineyard grapes into the base wine. Happens in Spain and Italy a lot.
What got me thinking about this is looking at a 55 year old bottle of Barolo normale in my cellar and wondering if any of the bottles I have will make it that long.
As a general matter, I think you’re right. And the trend can be seen across regions. Over the last 25 years, many Bordeaux chateaux has created new second and third wines, for instance. In the 90s, Guigal created his Chateau d’Ampuis Cote Rotie bottling, priced in between the La La’s and the basic Brune & Blonde.
I don’t think it necessarily means the base wine is now inferior though – particularly in Barolo, where winemaking on the whole is much better than it was before, say, the 80s. In many cases, the different bottlings simply represent a more sophisticated pricing scheme. Think airline fares. The profit-maximizing strategy may be to sell 25% of your output at 3x the base price. But that’s the most you can sell at that high price.
Put another way: The marginal difference in quality may much smaller than the difference in price. Whether it is or not is completely a matter of demand and marketing; i.e., what you can get away with.
The other thing is that sometimes the “top” wine is made in a different style. In California cabs, for instance, I often find the cheaper second wine better balanced for my tastes – less ripe, less heavily oaked. But to charge, say, $100 or more a bottle the wine pretty much has to be very ripe and very oak.
An interesting Barolo example: Oddero’s base Barolo is generally terrific, and cheap by Barolo standards. At the winery, I was told that they don’t view it as a lesser wine – just a traditional blend of vineyards where their holdings are too small to be bottled separately.
I would agree with Markus with the caveat that in some vintages quality is very broad and you’re able to maintain very high quality in the “normale” bottlings.
For our wines, the Souris stole the best wines/barrels from each of the vineyards. So a 2018 Goodfellow Whistling Ridge is not tremendously different in quality from a Matello Whistling Ridge from the previous decade.
But if there was no previous prestige cuvee then the elite barrels probably went into the normale before. Modern processes help raise overall quality(hopefully) so perhaps the two normale bottlings would still be close in overall quality.
A related question then, if you have a legendary Barolo vintage from the 60s, how would a mediocre vintage bottling from present compare in terms of quality/longevity? Does the improvement in winemaking make up for mother nature’s fluctuations?
For lack of a better way to ask this, would a present day 89 point vintage produce the quality of wine of a 93 point vintage in the 1960s, all else equal?
Others may feel differently, but you should probably adjust a bit for score inflation over the years. I kind of feel that 93 point wines from 35-40 years ago were the very, very best scores of the era. They were also lighter in alcohol by quite a bit, but still remarkable wines. By comparison, 89 points today is a mid-range score
Lol no. For me, a 1964 or 1967 in a perfect condition can be a 100 pointer.
That’s something a present-day vintage can’t achieve, not an excellent vintage and definitely not a mediocre vintage. I don’t know what happened in Piedmont back then or what kinds of magic tricks the producers did, but I feel we still haven’t surpassed the quality of 1964.
Tastes differ, I think. I’ve never had anything from the 60s that, to me, approaches the quality of some of the Barolos I’ve had from the late 80s. It’s actually one of the reasons I stopped going to big Barolo events because a lot of collectors like bringing those really old bottles and after two or three of them they don’t taste very interesting to me.
I guess a better way of asking is, would the same vintage today produce an ultimately better wine because of the advances in winemaking knowledge/technology?
Sorry to distract from the Barolo thread, but I don’t know that I’d agree with Markus here regarding how single vineyard bottlings must always affect the “regular bottling.” I’ll use my Clarice Pinot Noirs as an example. I bring in approximately 7 tons of fruit from the Garys’ Vineyard and 7 tons from Rosella’s Vineyard. Those are fermented individually in tanks and then, after fermentation, drained and then pressed to primarily new, one-year old, and two-year old barrels. When blending then, I have new, one year old barrel drained, two year old barrel drained, and two year old barrel pressed lots to consider. I bottle 3 wines each year and bulk out some. The Santa Lucia Highlands blend comes from both Garys’ and Rosella’s but uses little new oak, while the vineyard designated bottlings come from Garys’ and Rosella’s but use a large percentage of new oak. The wine that is sold on the bulk market is everything that is left over. The bottlings are different (some folks like new wood, others not) but I don’t think that means one is definitively superior to the others.
Thoughts?
Again, sorry for the diversion…but if someone is working to specifically create a different wine with their “regular” bottling and is also willing to bulk off wines, then maybe the vineyard-designate bottlings aren’t diminishing the blend?
It might also be that the bottles you have over there might’ve been in a different shape compared to what we have here - for example bottles from a collector who has kept the wines for themselves here compared to bottles sourced from auction houses or first a retailer has sourced them from restaurants, then they are shipped over to the US, then sold by the retailer, and perhaps auctioned once again?
I’ve had dozens of unimpressive Barolos, Barbarescos and Alto Piemonte reds from the 1960’s, but it is just crazy how a) many 1964s are still so remarkably alive, some even not particularly old yet! b) how many producers who didn’t make particularly impressive wines otherwise have made stunning 1964s that are still not only drinkable but also amazingly good, even today. I don’t know if the 2006s, 2010s, 2013s or 2016s are going to pull that kind of trick, although I certainly hope so.
I’m asking about that generality of SVDs affecting normales. I see this most in Barolo where a single vineyard can go for 50%+ more than a normale. The costs associated can’t possibly justify that difference in price.To justify that price differential, I’m assuming the best grapes are going into the single vineyards. If the best grapes are now going in a different bottling, that of course means they are not going in the normale and thus the quality of the normale bottling has decreased.
I’ve had plenty of bottles with good provenance, I just don’t ultimately find them all that interesting or enjoyable. I also think the late 80s (which aren’t exactly made yesterday) are much more enjoyable for me as a period of when I want to drink my Barolo on the aging curve. Having been to Piedmont, I know a number of producers who’re surprised collectors drink Barolos that old - they tend not to.
And how many collectors were buying Barolo for their cellars in the 60s? Especially from smaller producers? That’s not terribly realistic.
Indeed! I’m privileged to know a person who lived in Italy for many years and during that time managed to befriend (via a local wino friend) many older wine collectors who had seemingly endless cellars of older vintages bought upon release. During those years he managed to fill his own personal cellars with a ridiculous amount of older Italian wines.
I’ve both tasted and bought myself lots of older wines from auctions and shops of older wines, and every now and then those wines can be really great - but more often than not the bottle might be a lackluster performer, or even a disappointment. That has definitely not been the case with the wines we’ve been tasting from the cellar of this wine collector friend of mine.
So it might not be a terribly realistic scenario, but still a very possible one all the same!
But, yeah, certainly it’s also a matter of taste. I’ve had tons of excellent Nebbiolos from the 70’s and 80’s as well - and not all the 1964s have been exceptional either. On average my CT scores are higher for 1961, 1967 and 1970 - but that might be also because I’ve tasted as many 1964s as 1961s and 1967s put together!
And I must also say that I’m not particularly partial to older wines - on the contrary, I don’t like that much when a wine gets so old that you really can’t taste any sense of place, but instead the wine just tastes like any anonymous old wine that could be from anywhere. Those kinds of wines can be fully enjoyable, but I really don’t value them that highly. What’s crazy about 1964 is that in vertical tastings some 1964s have actually tasted younger than other vintages from the 1970s and 1980s!
I’ve heard that from wineries as well. Franny Beck sells the single vineyards and Blue Label blend for the same price and doesn’t see the blend as lesser, just different. I actually prefer the blend usually because it rounds out some of the individual characteristics to make a more complete wine.
This is why I am confused about how there is almost unanimous consensus on that the wine making is “better” today. How are we measuring wine making if not by the potential for legendary wines that seemingly will age forever? I get that consistency may be higher, but is that really what defines better wine making? Or is there something else?
Indeed! Of course it’s certainly possible that all the contemporary top vintages are heading in the same direction where 1964 is now - and like I already said in above post, I certainly hope so!