I find too much variations within aged Italian wines. A lot of them oxidized or heat damaged. Find a lot of them to be too raisny.
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That really doesnāt something that winemakers could help with and thus isnāt something that really pertains to the topic.
I just love how the traditionally styled Italian reds perform at the table whether it is with meat, tomato-based dishes or hard cheeses (think Barbaresco and Grana Padano). No matter what the region you often find similar elements like savory sourcherry driven fruit, bitterness etc but also differences that give each region their distinctive character. Obviously traveling to Italy many times has added to my love for the wines.
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Rare that I will ever disagree with you Otto, but for my own part I was very much writing comments from a consumer perspective, so I would be as guilty as Mike in that case. If aged bottles are (too often) faulty, then it may well put people off the joys of mature Italian wine. Weāll all agree thatās a shame.
That said, Iām not sure whether Mikeās issue is a problem in Italy (IMO it can be, but also the issue can be overstated); a problem of US buyers not being selective; a problem with shipping to the US; the wines being susceptible to variability or a problem with US retail / auction / distribution
As for raisiny, yes I can recognise that, in a way that I see less of in (say) Bdx blends. If indeed weāre talking about the same flavour, then I see it as an element of complexity.
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I donāt even know you anymore, and we even cycled together yesterday!
Agree 100% with Ian and @MikeL238. I understand Ottoās point, but at least the three of us, perhaps others, will also address it from the US consumers point of view.
My strike-out rate with top-tier, mature Italian wine has been abysmal. More flawed bottles than from any other country. Ordered a special, very matured Produttori from a respected retailer last year, yep, DOA. Par for the course for me.
I also struggle at most Italian restaurants, not sure why just about every single one I go to serves red wine warm. Sometimes not even at dining room temperature, but more like it it has been stored in the kitchen. This has been my norm. The two Italian restaurants near my beach place - elegant places - ditto. Warm. So I always BOYB and start with cocktail.
I do love a good Chianti. And I have my stable of producers, like Fontodi and Felsina. I also buy a lot of Produttori. That said, it is a small part of my consumption.
Had a killer 2016 Gaja āSori Tildinā Barbaresco on NYE. While I know these are generally described as fairly modern wines stylistically, whatever the case for me, it was wonderful that night in that setting.
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There is a ton of good Italian wines out there. But the question is a bit difficult to answer as it is a bit either orā¦
I love some Italian wineā¦ in the same way donāt like or dislike all French, German or Spanish wines. I like some of them and all for different reasons.
I am a big fan of Nebbiolo like many other on this board though.
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It sounds you have a beef with the wines available to you in the States, not Italian wines.
It sounds the same if I said that I find too much variations within aged Napa Cabs. A lot of them oxidized or heat damaged. Find a lot of them to be too raisiny.
Iām quite positive that Iād get a huge response how my sources are bad and that is not at all how proper old-school Napa Cab should be, they should be fresh and still going strong, not showing any kind of oxidation, heat damage or raisiny character.
So would it be ok to blame Napa Cabs as a category of wine just because I didnāt have access to good sources? Even if other people told me I was wrong and that is not at all how the wines should be like?
FWIW, I have had tons of too old aged Italian wines that are past their peak, but my hit/miss ratio is still better with older Italian wines than with, say, older Bdx.
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And this sounds like a problem with Italian restaurants, not with Italian wine. 
Donāt know about you guys, but at least to me it sounds weird to say that āmy problem with Italian wine is its warm serving temperatureā!
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Yes, 100%.
Just relaying my experience. Which in turn, impacts my purchasing decisions greatly.
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That is perfectly understandable.
Sounds pretty similar to my experiences with Castillo Ygay Reserva Especial. When the wine is in prime condition, it is one helluva wine. But Iāve had more corked and oxidized bottles than good Castillo Ygay Reserva Especials, so Iād rather steer clear of them.
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Yes, I vividly recall ordering a bottle of Barolo in a (UK) local trattoria, and the wine very much arrived at kitchen temperature. I asked if they had an ice-bucket to cool the heat out of it, to be told (by the young English waitress) āNo, you should only chill white wines and not redsā.
A fail throughout, as the owner should not have stored any wines in that (variable) heat, and the waitress needed to learn about the temperature to serve wines. I think we returned once, sticking to basics as they did those ok, but they closed a couple of years afterwards.
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I had a similar experience at an agriturismo near Etna. We ordered a bottle of 2016 Cornelissen Magma which was slightly warm and warmed even more over the course of the lunch. It was also still evolving and I wanted to save the 2nd half of the bottle for a few hours later to see how it opened up. I asked for an ice bucket for our room, to cool it and slow the still needed aeration and I got the same lecture.
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Well, for a country that likes warm beer, is warm red wine such a stretch? 
I had a similar experience at an āItalianā restaurant in CT. Iād gone the one and only time with a friend who ate there regularly. I shouldāve been warned when I ordered the duck rare and was told they could only serve it medium or moreābecause the duck was pre-cooked (!). I ordered a pinot nero and it came to the table at kitchen temperature. I told the waitress that the wine was far too warm, and she assured me that all red wine should be at āroom temperatureā. I told her to humour me and to bring me an ice bucket, which she did. Oh, and the glasses she brought to the table were hot out of the dishwasher! 
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I did drink the Geyserville the next night. And it was much improved. However, I very aware of the residual sugar level of this wine compared to what I normally drink.
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Iām in agreement with Otto on this. I sympathize with anyone who buys less Italian wine because they have had some poorly stored ones. However: Blame the storer, not the wine.
The issue IMHO isnāt the long term prospects of newly released wine, but the sad history of storage of the different regionsā bottles.
But Iām really curious about this last comment. Makes me wonder how different are our sources. I only started collecting seriously about a decade ago, so the older bottles Iāve tried are either friendsā or bought in the auction/secondary market. Iāve had vastly more success with Bordeaux than Piedmont/Tuscany for these older bottles. Gets even more extreme going back before the early ā90s (almost no failed Bordeaux, many failed Italian wines). Perhaps more Bordeaux was bought and stored early on in my country (US), more Italian in yours?
My friendsā bottles bought on release have the highest success rate. Note to self: make more friends!
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I was talking about old bottles ie. something like +40 yo bottles to begin with. If people have wines from the 1990ās (or younger) that are oxidized and past their peak, it sounds like there has been something badly wrong with the storage, no matter if the wines are Italian or Bordelais.
Truth be told, I have no idea how much Bordeaux or Italian wines have been bought and stored in Finland, because our country has been vinous backwater since time immemorial. We really donāt have any history of drinking or cellaring proper wine.
Instead most of the old Italian wines Iāve bought and/or tasted have been sourced directly from Italy (Italian shops of old wines, restaurants and collectors) - whereas the old wines of Bordeaux have always been readily available in the EU (less so in Finland), so the quality of sources has been much more variable. Wines bought upon release and kept in a personal cellar since are quite reliably good, but itās much more iffy with bottles purchased from auctions or whatever random online shops that purchase large lots of older wines and sell them on their website. You can really never be certain with the provenance there.
But yeah, the sources are the main culprit here and I do know it. My point in saying that Iāve had more success with wines of Italy rather than those of Bordeaux just drives my original point of the ridiculousness of blaming Italian wines for their storage conditions. Iām not saying I donāt like wines of Bordeaux or theyād be less ageable than Italian wines; I wanted to point out that the issues with storage and in which condition an old wine is in depend heavily on what kinds of wines are available to you, not on the wine itself - a point, in turn, which you already agreed with!
Well that was an unnecessarily long explanation. 
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A small German online retailer east of Bonn used to have a ridiculous selection of old reds from Piemonte and Tuscany as little as ten years ago. I am sure Finns played quite a significant role in that well drying up as I know a lot of people who took advantage and bought a ton of wine from him. I bought my fair share (though not nearly enough) and I cannot for the life of me remember a dud among those bottles. His cellar conditions surely were good but as none of the bottles ever carried any sort of indication that they would have traveled outside of Italy or Germany Iām lead to believe that they had only been moved once and Iām pretty certain that was the reason for their consistent performance.
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Great story and context. Thanks Ikka!
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