I just took delivery of a mixed half-case of 1971 and 1974 Massolino Barolo. The question is, what do I have? The seller, the owner of a highly reputable enoteca from which I have bought a lot of old and new Nebbiolo of excellent provenance, sold the wines as “Vigna Rionda Riserva” and took the time to note that I would not see the word “Riserva” on the label because Massolino made the Rionda under the riserva rules back then, but did not put the word “Riserva” on the label until later. (On its website, Massolino calls the wine “Barolo Docg Vigna Rionda” in large, bold black caps, with the word “Riserva” in tiny letters beneath, and puts the tiny word “Riserva” beneath the vintage date on the label currently in use.) I next went to the Massolino website (multilingual with a wealth of information, if you have never seen it) to see if I could learn more about my wines…and ended up in the spider hole formerly occupied by Saddam!
My wines both use a historical label which can be seen on the website, one with a multi-colored seal containing the words “Azienda Agricola Vigna Rionda”, but no definitive indication of vineyard, and definitely no use of the word “riserva”. I looked under Vigna Rionda Riserva on the website, and learned that that wine has only been made as such since 1982. The Massolino family, on the other hand, has been making wine in Serralunga d’ Alba since 1896. According to the website, five Baroli are made today, including a normale apparently made from various Serralunga fruit sources since 1911, the Vigna Rionda Riserva, made since 1982, Margheria, made since 1985, Parafada, made since 1990, and Parussi, made since 2007. There kicks about in various sources the idea that two different generations of the Massolino family went on vineyard buying sprees, the first in the 40s and 50s (after which they mostly sold grapes in bulk for a time), and then in the 60s and 70s, but nowhere could I discover when they purchased their Vigna Rionda holding. I consulted O’Keefe’s book, but found no answer there, as most of her information seems to have been taken from the Massolino website. I then went to Sheldon Wasserman’s venerable tome. He began following Massolino with the 1971 vintage, referring to both of my wines as “Vigna Rionda”, but not using the “Riserva” designation until 1982, consistent with the Massolino website information. (I may live to regret consulting Wasserman. He said that the 1971 was drying out 25 years ago, and that the 1974 was “not well-made, rather poor”!) Thus, at the end of the day, I must conclude that I bought normales rather than riservas, and with no indication one way or the other whether Vigna Rionda fruit was used to make the wine. Luckily, I paid only $94 a bottle for these prospectively not well-made, poor, dried-out wines of uncertain heritage, but I am certain that I would do it again with comparable wines, given the opportunity!
P.S. Massolino family members were among the founders of the Consortium for the Defense of Barolo and Barbaresco (as if they needed any defense, save maybe from German officers drinking them up during WWII (see Stanley Kramer’s film “The Secret of Santa Vittoria”!)), and as a consequence, some fun stuff appears on their website, such as a glossary of wine terms and vintage chart going all the way back to 1896. In case you are wondering, the “great” vintages according to the Massolinos are 1898, 1905, 1907, 1912, 1917, 1919, 1927, 1929, 1934, 1958, 1961, 1964, 1970, 1978, 1982, 1989, 1996, 2003 and 2005, while the “exceptional” vintages are
1922, 1931, 1947, 1971, 1985, 1990, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008. (OK, they missed badly a few times on the “exceptional” list and 1967, 1974, 1979, 1986 and 1999 fans are going to quibble (although all of those vintages fell into the third category, “excellent”), but it is interesting to read how they call out the really lousy vintages and the explanations that they offer for every vintage. On balance, their chart is better than most…)
