This. It’s a game changer if this is truly is an amaro. The bitters can definitely taste out of place if one expects the beverage to be a normal wine.
(But that doesn’t change that something - most likely brett - can taste very metallic and even rusted in many older Italian, especially Piedmontese, reds!)
ABV will be around 20%-ish if it’s Amaro - any ABV listed on the bottle?
ABV=13.25% I’m well acquainted with Amaro liqueurs and this is NO Amaro. It’s a wine. A nasty nasty old wine.
Very well, that “Amaro” in the label just threw us off! It’s always hard to say what’s going on when not tasting the wine yourself!
Me and John were wondering if the “metallic” character was just some herbal qualities of amaro, but if that really was wine and not amaro or herb-infused wine (like Barolo Chinato), it just might be that which I associate with aged brett character, which can become quite aggressively metallic over the years.
For example this wine (although from Friuli, not Piedmont) popped into my mind:
Deep, luminous black cherry color that permits a little bit of light through. The nose is developed and quite herbaceous with aromas of peppercorns, smoky chipotle. some powdered bell pepper, a little bit of wizened blackcurrant and a hint of beef jerky. The wine is medium-bodied, dry and quite thin on the palate with noticeably metallic overall taste followed by flavors of tart lingonberries, crunchy cranberries, some leathery tones, a little bit of ripe redcurrants and a hint of wizened blackcurrant. The wine is very high in acidity with very gentle, almost fully resolved tannins. The finish is dry, thin and metallic with quite long, lean and thin flavors of tart redcurrants, some tobacco, a little bit of leather and a herbaceous hint of bell pepper.
A wine that is surprisingly alive for a regular red wine from a region that was not really known for high quality back then. Age seems to have thinned the taste out to some degree and the overall taste is quite metallic (probably some brett action here), but the wine is still very much drinkable - although I’d describe it more “interesting” than “enjoyable”. Nevertheless, it’s a feat of its own how the wine hasn’t fallen apart and oxidized over all these years. (82 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
Amaro is a broad category. Some current ones are as low as 17% (particularly from the Northwest of Italy), while others are over 30%. The ones from Piedmont tend to be on the low end. I’ve had some vermouth amaro that’s only 14 or 15%, as I recall.
The fact that (a) it says amaro, (b) there are lots of bottles from that era still for sale and (c) Chambers Street listed it as amaro strongly suggests that it is on fact amaro. There’s no way there would be dozens of bottles of this stuff on the market if it were simply 50-plus-year-old dolcetto.
Not quite sure what to say, other than that I have many Amari, and many many bottles of wine, and everything I know tells me that this is not Amaro liqueur. I am no expert in the labeling habits of 1960s Piemonte, so I’m not certain why it says Amaro on the label, but an ABV of 13.25%, absolute lack of discernible herbal flavors, nothing on the label to indicate the addition of distillate, and the fact that it simply looked and smelled like an aged red wine (most Amari have a brownish color and strong herbal nose), tells me that this is just a red wine: nothing more than fermented grape juice. Not quite sure what else to say…it’s possible I’m wrong. But I don’t think so.
It’s possible the producer just called the wine “Dolcetto Amaro” just warn any unwary customers that the wine isn’t going to be sweet despite being labeled a dolcetto (“little sweet one”), implying they had customers outside Piedmont where people wouldn’t be familiar with Dolcetto.
Ah, Chambers St! I just received a bottle of the same '67 in a spring shipment. And a '67 Barbera by the same producer.
This confirms that I shouldn’t save it for a special occasion - but then so does CS selling it for $18 …
FYI, I contacted the winery over its website 10 days ago, but have not received a response.
I have a '67 Gaja Dolcetto, as well as a '65 Barbera. Also a couple of '71 Grignolinos from Giacomo Voerzio. I’ve had some dead bottles of old Italian wines from time to time, but fortunately never a mouth full of rotting metal. But hey, I’m a vinous gambler and don’t mind a loss now and then.
Cheers,
Warren