1999 & 2001: Dueling Blind Barolo Vintages

[Eric_Guido]

@g.colangelo

Oh, I just wrote in the other thread on 2004, that you seemed to have gotten a lot of pleasure from drinking these wines. Apparently I was wrong?

I absolutely got pleasure from drinking them, but I wouldn’t start to drink down my inventory, in fear of how much better they will likely become.

[g.colangelo]

@Eric Guido

@g.colangelo

Oh, I just wrote in the other thread on 2004, that you seemed to have gotten a lot of pleasure from drinking these wines. Apparently I was wrong?

I absolutely got pleasure from drinking them, but I wouldn’t start to drink down my inventory, in fear of how much better they will likely become.

Sure. Wholeheartedly agree.
I only have some 1999 in my cellar and a few older than that. A bit more of 2001. I am not in a hurry for any of these and plan to follow them for a long time.
But when I have drunk them recently, they offered a lot of pleasure (the latest one was a Brovia Garblet Sue’).
Only some of the Produttori Riserva 2001 (in particular the Montefico) I found to be still very tannic and in need of a lot more cellar time.

[Doug_Sher]

I was going to try a 2001 Azelia Fiasco tonight but after reading these posts I put it back in the locker with a note that I shouldn’t even think about trying it before 2026. I thought that I had previously enjoyed a number of 2001 Baroli, but now I know I was just wrong.

[Ken_V]

FWIW, here are my notes and pix from this lovely evening:

http://www.finewinegeek.com/tn/2014-09-12_NV_Barolo99-01_NYVintners/

[Craig_G]

Yum, that looks great, Ken. Too bad about the meaninglessness.

[Ken_V]

@Craig Gleason

Yum, that looks great, Ken. Too bad about the meaninglessness.

[Nick_Gangas]

Great tasting. Wasn’t there just a similar one last year of the 01’s that was less successful ?

[Ken_V]

@Nick Gangas

Great tasting. Wasn’t there just a similar one last year of the 01’s that was less successful ?

Yes. Obviously, those people didn’t know what they were doing.

[Nick_Gangas]

@Ken V

@Nick Gangas

Great tasting. Wasn’t there just a similar one last year of the 01’s that was less successful ?

Yes. Obviously, those people didn’t know what they were doing.

Thanks for the smile.

[Benjamin_Goldberg]

To answer more seriously about the difference between this tasting and Greg Dal Piaz’s last year (which I didn’t attend), as you can see from last year’s thread,

http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1274715#p1274715

and Greg’s article on Snooth,

http://www.snooth.com/articles/tasting-2001-barolo/

there were only two wines in common: the 2001 G. Mascarello Monprivato and the 2001 G. Conterno Cascina Francia. From the writeups, it seems that the Monprivato was flawed and the Cascina Francia was wildly underperforming.

At the recent tasting, both of these bottles performed very well. Had the Giacosas, Bartolo, and Rinaldi been poured last year, would they have performed better than the others? Who knows!

-Ben

[Travis_Scott]

Ditto here, sorry!

[Eric_Guido]

Speaking to Ben’s comment, This is very much what I was trying to explain in a past post. These wines were the cream of the crop and everything performed beautifully in many cases unexpectedly well. Even going back to a 2001 Barolo tasting I did with Greg the year before that, we only had one or two of these wines and both at that tasting seemed to be poor bottles.

[John_Webber]

just wow!

[Marcu_Stanley]

@Travis Scott

99 & 01 for Barolo?
Even the 82s are too young for the most part, if you are drinking good producers.
I think it’s totally cool to taste whatever wine you want to at whatever time. Not dissing that at all.
But all nouveaux Italianati should hopefully understand that these results are meaningless vis-à-vis how the wines might taste when they are actually ready to drink 25-50 years from now.

Sometimes I think there is a kind of machismo contest in these aging recommendations. Wines that take 40-60 years to be ready to drink (your implication on Barolo) simply should not be owned by anyone who has a normal human lifespan and is dependent on their own cellar for reliable aging. (Of course, they make good candidates for multi-generational investments by people who live in castles). Judging by the tasting notes here the drinkers got a great deal of pleasure from the 1999 and 2001 Barolo they opened recently. What is the better measure of drinkability, the pleasure people take in them right now or the hypothetical flavor profile after the ideal 40-60 years of aging?

(I say this as someone who is and likely always will be a ‘nouveaux Italianati’, as I do not have and likely never will have the ability to access 40 year old perfectly stored Barolo from the best vintages/producers).

[Marcu_Stanley]

@Ken V

Let me point out that if you have formed the opinion that “Even the 82s are too young for the most part” then you have done exactly what we have done. There is no moment, no year, when these wines will be at their peak and we will know it. You can only know a wine was at its peak after it is no longer. Every tasting is a point along the evolution of a wine. IMO people can get great pleasure and information from a tasting like this, and we did.

Ah, I posted my previous post before seeing that Ken had already made a perfect response. Bravo!

I once asked a producer at a Burgundy tasting what the optimal age for drinking a particular wine, and he gave a very prototypical French answer – 'a wine is like a person, all ages have their charms and disadvantages. A baby is cute and fat but simple. A teenager is energetic but surly. An old person is wise and complex but lacks the vitality of youth. etc."

[Oliver_McCrum]

I don’t think modern Barolo needs 30 years to show its essence. I remember some of the traditional '78s as being brutally tannic for decades, but these days I don’t think that’s the case at all. I had a Brovia '96 Rocche a few months ago that was breathtaking, and '96 is surely the most long-lived of the last generation of vintages.

[J_a_y_H_a_c_k]

@Marcus Stanley

@Travis Scott

99 & 01 for Barolo?
Even the 82s are too young for the most part, if you are drinking good producers.
I think it’s totally cool to taste whatever wine you want to at whatever time. Not dissing that at all.
But all nouveaux Italianati should hopefully understand that these results are meaningless vis-à-vis how the wines might taste when they are actually ready to drink 25-50 years from now.

Sometimes I think there is a kind of machismo contest in these aging recommendations. Wines that take 40-60 years to be ready to drink (your implication on Barolo) simply should not be owned by anyone who has a normal human lifespan and is dependent on their own cellar for reliable aging. (Of course, they make good candidates for multi-generational investments by people who live in castles). Judging by the tasting notes here the drinkers got a great deal of pleasure from the 1999 and 2001 Barolo they opened recently. What is the better measure of drinkability, the pleasure people take in them right now or the hypothetical flavor profile after the ideal 40-60 years of aging?

(I say this as someone who is and likely always will be a ‘nouveaux Italianati’, as I do not have and likely never will have the ability to access 40 year old perfectly stored Barolo from the best vintages/producers).

I agree. I had a 2000 Manzone Bricat on Saturday and there was plenty of pleasure in the experience. However, I must admit that the 1970 Monfortino that I had in 2011 was better.

[Ian_Sutton]

Getting an enjoyable bottle can be had at 5 or 10 years old.

What you can (but definitely not always) get at 30 or 40 years old, is something with flavours and aromas that are almost unique in wine. It is a gamble and many never emerge from the tannins, ending up skeletal.

Each of us takes our own view. Drinking them at 5-10 years old means you’ll probably not hit a dead wine (cork permitting) but many will be difficult truculent bstards leaving you wondering why you bothered. Drinking them at 30-40 years may mean half the bottles feel like they’ve gone well past best and are barely enjoyable. That’s not to say 20-30 years is necessarily the sweet spot as you can still get tight bstards or coffin-dodgers and yet still miss out on the haunting flavours when everything is resolved on a good bottle.

I’m certainly happy drinking 2000s now, as so many are open and charming, yet with concerns about whether they will retain that charm in another decade. I’ll probably drink them over the next 5 years. The 96s I’ll keep longer.

regards
Ian

[Travis_Scott]

“nouveaux Italianati”

Never applied that description to anyone here. And it’s not even pejorative.

However, I do see where there would be the potential for confusion, IF someone were to:

1. decide to become offended on behalf of their own collection of glass and grape juice (or even someone else’s collection!), just because a certain category of wine was described in what they felt was a cavalier tone;

2. decide they are so offended on behalf of all that poor glass and grape juice that, by golly, they’re not only going to read a pejorative tone into a description of an abstract group of people, they’re also going to shoehorn themselves and their friends into that group just so they can be even MORE offended!

[Travis_Scott]

Marcus,

I know I’m barking up the wrong tree here BUT, in my experience, different grapes, from different vineyards, made in different ways, produce wines that can be expressive, or not expressive, at different points in their evolution.

Baby fat can be perfectly fine on a baby Chambolle, for instance.

But these baby Barolos aren’t cute, they’re psycho! Like the Chucky Doll coming to chainsaw your tongue off and crush your teeth from the inside.

Some people enjoy a bit of VA, some can’t stand even a splash. Doesn’t mean either group is less “manly”—wherever that came from—and if being “manly” is even something those people decide they want to care about. It does mean, if you’ve only had Brunello with VA, and hated all of it, that you don’t necessarily hate all Brunello.

Point is, the tannins on immature Barolo AT BEST make the texture of the wine in your mouth utterly different than it is on fully mature examples. Not even a glimmer of resemblance. And at worst, they make the wine unpalatable.