Saturday TNs: Produttori and Pizza

It may be hot & humid outside, but with the A/C cranked, one can still enjoy Nebbiolo in August! While I have hosted tastings in the past that focused on the single vineyard bottlings, I rarely do side-by-sides of the normale. Not sure why that is, but I stood these up in the cellar a couple weeks ago and I decided that take-out pizza was the order of the day for dinner, so what better opportunity to check out these wines.

I will try to get back and update this with any additional thoughts, but on the initial pop and pour, the 2004 was to me a clear favorite, followed closely by the 2006.

  • 2004 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco - Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Barbaresco (8/6/2022)
    Red fruits, rose petals & tar on the nose. Good acidity on the palate, tart red fruit - very likable, and similar in terms of aging profile with my previous note in April, '21. If you have this in the cellar and havenā€™t tried it recently, do yourself a favor and check out a bottle.
  • 2006 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco - Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Barbaresco (8/6/2022)
    Oh, this is nice. I had this twice in the same week back in March and liked it both times, and the wine today is in that same vein. That said, on the initial pour, itā€™s not quite up to the standard set by the 2004. The wine really spreads out on the palate, but the nose doesnā€™t have the dimensions that the '04 shows on opening.
  • 2008 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco - Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Barbaresco (8/6/2022)
    For whatever reason, this tends to be a forgotten vintage when it comes to my Produttori wines - I just seldom feel the urge to pull a bottle. And with the caveat that this is admittedly stiff competition, on opening this is also my least favorite wine of the quartet.

One of the strange things about this wine (and something that might be difficult to discern if I wasnā€™t drinking the wines side-by-side) is that this wine comes off as the least elegant wine of the foursome - it is definitely not ā€œlight on itā€™s feetā€ when it comes to palate presence.

Maybe Iā€™ll like it better with food, but at the outset this is clearly the 4th horse in the race.

  • 2010 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco - Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Barbaresco (8/6/2022)
    I will try to update this note after dinner - the wine is nice at this point, and I got an interesting spice note on the nose that was appealing, but I just had a great glass of the '04 and that is making for a pretty difficult comparison with this wine.

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Nice work Roberto! I donā€™t have a lot of wine purchase regrets, but not buying enough Produttori would make the list. One of the all-time great QPRs IMHO.

RT

But in terms of regrets, Iā€™m sure Joanne regrets that you donā€™t have a few more Grateful Dead CDs in the house, right? pileon

At any rate, after drinking the wines with pizza, my wife and I came pretty close in ranking the four suspects. We both agreed the 2008 was the weakest wine of the night, and the 2004 was the best. Where we differed was that she had a slight preference for the 2010 over the 2006. I, on the other hand, thought the 2006 was the wine that gained the most with air, and by the end of dinner I felt it was challenging the 2004 for supremacy :wine_glass:

Thank you for the notes.
A bit of history on the 2006s, courtesy of a Berserker
http://www.finewinegeek.com/produttori/2006_Barbaresco.html

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Grateful.
Only have 2004s, including a few single vineyard bottles.

After buying quite consistently for nearly two decades dating back to ā€˜96 or ā€˜97 I stopped and gave away all the wines I had remaining (maybe 8-9 cases). The combination of rusticity, VA and tannin structure just no longer were something that I was particularly enamored with. I didnā€™t find them unpleasant but I didnā€™t find them to be wines I was interested in consuming.

Iā€™m saying itā€™s a me thing, not a them thing.

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Would have thought the 2010 would have should a little better because of the vintage.
Iā€™ve only had the 06 out of your quartet and, out of 3 bottles already, liked the 1st one a year or 2 out of release best. Subsequent ones have shown as blowsy and without delineation, as well as being somewhat rustic and a bit tomatoey.

Can you describe the VA notes that you experienced with Produttori del Barbaresco? Itā€™s something that I donā€™t associate much if, if any, with the ones from 90s and earlier vintages that Iā€™ve had.

As for rusticity and tannin notes, itā€™s not just you. Itā€™s me too, but those are reasons why I like them as they all gloriously integrate with cellar time.

2010 was no where near as successful for Barbaresco as it was for Barolo. Unlike 2011, 14 and 18?, where the opposite was true, 2010 was erratic and in some cases disappointing for Barbaresco.

Iā€™m especially sensitive to VA and those wines have it.

I would also say that my experience with the age-ability of the wines to be highly, highly variable. Lots of older stuff went down the drain.

2010 was also a vintage in which they did not make the Crus bottlings, so everything went into the normale. That potentially made it a better wine.

We just finished Sunday dinner - my wife tried a new recipe that had rigatoni, sausage, pancetta, pecorino and passata - it was off the hook [winner.gif]

At any rate, we both tried day 2 pours of each of the wines, and I wouldnā€™t change my initial ranking. That said, while today I still prefer the 2004, I think in the long run the 2006 will eventually overtake it.

Not sure what to make of the 2010 - and I still have almost a case of this left. But over the past two days, it didnā€™t show any potential that it would eventually run with either the ā€˜06 or ā€˜04.

So what is your plan with the 2010? I have three that I was planning on holding till maybe 2030. Not worth waiting?

Hell, at my age I shouldnā€™t be making any plans for 2030 [wow.gif]

Chris, I donā€™t think thereā€™s any rush here, and I will be checking in on these periodically, but I didnā€™t see the wherewithal in the wine to ultimately get to that level where the ā€˜04 and ā€˜06 currently reside.

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