I picked up a bottle of this from a local retailer. Pretty sure this wasn’t temp controlled. But thankfully it’s not damaged, if slighting more mature than a better store bottle would be.
I’m new to Piedmont and have been buying a lot of 2007 and 2008 Produtturi cru’s and the normale along with with some select Barolo and Langhe Nebbiolo. I’ve obviously drank some Nebb so I know I love these wines, but most of my experience has been buying for the long term and fantasizing and obsessing over my buying strategy. So with that in mind, I was pretty stoked to be able to mind a mature wine to drink.
Dark garnet color with a touch of orange bricking. Not much fruit on the nose. Picking up sherry cask and some subdued dark floral rose. Not perfectly balanced. There is plenty of acidity and we’ll see how this pairs with some fat and protein later. There are however plenty of drying tannins, which could be from the vintage. And that’s where the balance seems off to me. The fruit isn’t gone but its in the background and surrounded by the dry tannin.
AG recently rates this wine 90. Definitely its in the ballpark with me too. I’m just glad for the opportunity to taste a mature Piedmont Nebb, even though it’s a pedestrian wine.
Did you decant this?
I drank my last bottle in November and it was perfectly sound though still young and stern. My notes said that it was fine with meat. The fact that your bottle was tough and didn’t t show much fruit doesn’t surprise me in a 2001. But the sherry-cask note suggest some poor storage. This was on the market in the U.S. in 2006, and that’s an eternity if it was on a shelf all that time.
(A bottle of the 01 Boito two or three years ago that a friend had kept in her closet since released was surprisingly advanced.)
I don’t seem to have notes on this, but I believe Enrico Dellapiana, the winemaker, told me when I visited in 2011 that he’d had one batch of bad corks for the 01 vintage and that some bottles of one cru bottling were suffering from that. But I’m not dead sure of that.
No decant John. Slow O2 for a couple of hours. I will decant it for sediment and some air an hour before dinner. Maybe it will improve for the better. I hope so. Will update the TN later.
I have no doubt storage has affected the wine, but hopefully not too badly. I was hoping it would just speed up the maturity without altering balance. But the sherry cask aroma might be a bad sign.
The cork looks great. And it’s not corked of course.
I would guess the decant will help. As will food.
Just starting to get into the Nebbiolo grape. Really enjoying the ride.
Thanks
Chalking this sub par showing up to less than ideal storage. And perhaps an average wine as well, if AG’s note is on track.
I just stumbled on this old thread.
I visited Rizzi three weeks ago and Enrico confirmed that some of the 2001 Boito was bottled with a bad batch of corks. They have cases of the wine still there and Enrico shook is head as he recounted this painful experience. The couple of bottles that I had were fine.
I purchased two bottles of 2001 Rizzi Boito from Winebid in July 2013. One bottle was heat damaged. I have not tried the other bottle. I also purchased some 2005 Rizzi Pajore from the same source and those bottles were not heat damaged.
Are you sure it was heat damaged or just oxidized from a bad cork?
So far as I know, the cork problem only affected the 2001 Boito, and not all bottles. I seem to have lucked out with mine.
it appeared that it was affected by heat versus oxygen
Sheila,
What would the difference be, in tasting the wine?
the fruit appeared more cooked
I think that that’s a good description of an oxidized wine, I don’t know how one could tell the difference. Unless the cork was ‘pushed’?
Oliver you could be correct. It was 3 years ago, and I remember thinking and writing down in my notes…heat damage
I find stewed or faded flavors in random bottles of wine sometimes, including wines that we’ve imported, which is to say wines that I know have been correctly handled. It’s a big problem with corks, not much discussed. Heartbreaking in cases like this where you have high expectations of a good bottle…
The prematurely aged bottle I referred to when this thread first got underway was from the same case as my bottles but was stored in a friend’s apartment in NYC with no temperature control. I assumed that was the problem at the time. But talking to Enrico, I gather it was a very serious cork problem – enough that he couldn’t sell all the wine or had to take some back, judging by the cases still at the winery. So I would guess that someone encountered this and dumped their wines on Winebid.
John, I still have one more bottle. I will open it in the next week or so, and let you know.