Since no one has posted yet on the marathon tasting of 2001 Baroli that Greg dal Piaz organized on Saturday, I’ll kick things off. I presume the rest of the gang is still waiting for their gums to recover from the tannins.
First, a big thanks to Greg for running this and contributing all the wines.
The bottom line: The wines were very disappointing, and a number showed flaws such oxidation that were very worrisome.
Greg was interested, in particularly, to see how the more traditionally made wines fared against the more modern ones. Overall, the contest went to the modernists, I thought. Certainly they did not lose.
In short, not what any of us expected.
Possible explanations:
- The wines are an awkward moment (perhaps true of many of the more traditionally produced wines, but this explanation can be a refuge for bad wines).
- Palate fatigue and lack of food (but why, then, was the last flight, of Brunates, by far the best?).
These were tasted double-blind. Greg organized the flights ahead but I numbered the bottles so he didn’t know which flight was which or which order they were in within each flight. The rest of us did not know the list or even that the flights were organized by village.
Greg had purchased these on release from Astor, where he worked at the time. He double-decanted these at 10 am and we began tasting around 4:30. Sojourn on East 79th was kind enough to host us, and its patrons were indulgent of Brad and Leo’s increasingly amplified insults, culminating in calumnies about each other’s mothers – which were greatly enjoyed by the rest of us tasters, if not the other patrons.
I have no strong conviction about my scores or rankings, but here goes. Some were better when we (finally) had some food. Surprise, surprise. Most were so tight that I never found a lot of specific aromas and flavors to note. Where there are two scores, the latter is on retasting.
Flight 1: Monforte
A. Conterno – Cicala: 85 Nice cherries and floral note at first, then oak. Then more oak. The oak stood in the wings at first and then stormed to the center stage and stole the show. In the mouth, a caramel note. Overall kind of disjointed.
Grasso - Casa Mate: 83 Some oxidation (WTF??) and prune that doesn’t blow off. Same thing in the mouth. Some people thought they got some TCA, but most of us didn’t. A later note said my score was too high.
Alesandria – Gramolere: 87/91 Medium weight, tight on the nose. Balanced in the mouth but very tight. This got markedly better with a bit of air and food.
Clerico - Ciabot Mentin Ginestra: 90 Black cherry and a bit of heat in the nose. Good depth, with some wood in the mouth. Masculine, quite extracted. I speculated Serralunga. Oak really comes up as it sits out. Hard tannins at the back.
Oddero – Mondoca: 88+/92 Sweet, slight cherry candy in the nose with a bit of perfume. More feminine than others. Not knowing the flight organizing principle, I said this reminded me of a Marcarini La Serra in its femininity. Very, very pleasurable later with pasta and beef ragu.
Flight 2: Castiglione Falletto
Cascina Ballarin - Tre Ciabot: 88- Some dried flowers on the nose. Good depth and fairly open in the mouth.
Cavallotto Riserva San Giuseppe: 91/93+ Darker in color, very tight on the nose at first. In the mouth, backward but balanced, with great depth and grip at the back. Later this showed real elegance and became one of the WOTNs for me.
G. Mascarello – Monprivato: 80- Solvent hints in the nose – like something I’d used to remove grease from machinery. Nothing interesting in the mouth. No fruit. Later it still just seemed tannic and dumb. This might just be shut down, but that thing on the nose – which others got, too – was troubling. (Note: When I visited the cantina in late 2005, they showed all their 01s except the Monprivato.)
Brovia - Garblet Sue: 75 VA on the nose. Oxidized in the mouth. What happened?
Scavino - Bric del Fiasc: 84/87. Very shut down on the nose. In the mouth, some cherry. Lots of depth and grip. Some wood spice. On the masculine side. Later the balance seemed good but the wine didn’t seem very transparent; the flavors seemed a bit muddy (malo in barrel, perhaps?).
Flight 3: Serralunga (funny how the notes get sketchier as I go along)
Ascheri - Coste & Bricco: 80 “Weird” nose, disjointed. OK but boring in the mouth.
Cappellano – Rupestris: 78 Harsh in the mouth and disjointed (wood tannins, I wondered). Tough, backward. Unrelenting.
G. Conterno - Cascina Francia: 70 (though I later wrote that this was far too low) Sigh. Another seriously, seriously disappointing bottle of this wine – my third – that was so yummy young. Something very off-putting in the nose. Harsh in the mouth. Later I couldn’t detect any faults; it’s just one tough sucker of a wine.
Massolino - Vigna Rionda: 75 Vegetal nose – very atypical Barolo. Softer in the mouth and big.
Schiavenza – Broglio: Oxidized on the nose, shot in the mouth. Did I get chlorine on the finish?
Flight 4: Cannubi
Burlotto: 84 (later wrote that this was too harsh) Muted, masked nose. Seemed disjointed on first round; later seemed just very tight. The finish seemed both harsh but sweet.
Chiarlo: 70 Burned coffee on the nose. Harsh mouth. We moved along quickly. (A Chiarlo Cerequio that Leo contributed after the main tasting was far worse.)
Sandrone - Cannubi Boschis: 89 Big, ripe, extracted, a bit flabby – and a relief after the others. Celery notes on the finish. What’s that about?
Brezza: 85 (later wrote that this was too low) Finally, a more classic nebbiolo nose of rose hips and dried flowers and fruits. Big, ripe, extracted, seems even lower acid than the preceding wine. Later seems just backward and structured.
E. Pira: 88 Brighter, better acidity, but a trace of oxidation. The balance and femininity of this is just as appealing as it was on release. But where’s that oxidation coming from?
Flight 5: Brunate (almost restoring our faith in the vintage; though note that style didn’t seem to have a bearing on quality here; there was near jubilation when we tasted through these)
Voerzio: 92 Big, tannic, extracted, but a bit diffuse/disjointed on retasting. A trace of VA at the back?
Altare: 91 Great depth and fruit. Delicious. Later seemed more generic in the mouth. Long, tannic finish.
Vietti: 89 Very ripe, rich, masculine but fruity.
Marcarini: 89 Taught but good depth. A bit less fruit than some of the others. Quite a bit of sediment. (I’ve had a couple of bottles of this over the past two or three years that showed much better.)
Marengo: 91 Good depth, balance. Sweet, rich, ripe.
Attendees: me, Greg, Leo Frokic, Cristi Dezso, Levi Dalton, Jamie Wolff, Brad Kane, Josh Leader, Greg Tatar
) I cannot think of a vintage (maybe 1997, I suppose, with the Brunate e Capalot) where a Voerzio wine could vie for WOTN honors. Greg posted on the gray slime problem, which really seems like an Altare winery problem, rather than a vintage problem. It is clear that 2001 is not an early-drinking vintage, and it has been bandied about with 2004 and 2006 as a potentially classic vintage, but you would think it unlikely that such a wide range of styles and quality would produce such across-the-board mediocrity, even in a concensus off-vintage (which 2001 clearly was not). I bought only 5 wines from this vintage, the Sandrone Cannubi, Monfortino, G. Mascarello Ca d’ Morissio and the two Giacosa red labels, only one of which was present in the subject tasting, but the Giacosa Rabaja Riserva may be the best Rabaja ever made. I also bought and consumed a lot of 2001 Barbera, which has been consistently terrific, and drinks well even now. I have to conclude that the problem here is something other than the vintage…
.