It will be interesting to see how well the Produttori Riserve of the past 20 years will age. I have 1967, 1971 and 1974 Rabaja’, Montestefano and Pora Riserve and Riserve Speciale sourced here that are certainly drinkable, but not yet fully mature, and could have another 10-20, maybe even 30, years left. Also, I think that the jury is still very much out on the 2007 vintage generally, in Barolo and Barbaresco. I am betting that, whether it is somebody’s idea of “classic” or not, 2007 will go down as one for the ages. (Overgeneralizing about the warmer vintages like 1997, 2000 and 2007 is already leaving egg on some reviewer, and even retailer and loquacious wine-board commentator, faces.) While it is true that some producers inevitably did not cope well with the conditions presented by such vintages, it is also true that those that did made world-beating wines. Gaja’s 1997s, Sandrone’s 1997 Cannubi Boschis and Giacosa’s 2000 and 2007 red labels, all brilliant wines, go a long way to destroying “hot year, not classic” mythology, which is best applied to scorched-earth vintages like 2003. Also, winemakers now have more tools to optimize their warm-vintage results than they did in, say, 1990, so the later warm vintages figure to produce more ageworthy wines as well. I much prefer the 2007 Nebbioli to the 2008s, except, curiously enough, the 2008 Produttori, which are indeed terrific.
I defer to Todd and the others above who are drinking more 2007 Produttori lately as to projected ageworthiness, as I have had only a couple so far, and, given the popularity of Produttori’s wines, I suspect that additional opinions will surface here on all of the vintages that you mention, including 1997 and 2000. Bob Hughes has not weighed in yet, and I think that he drinks Produttori Barbaresco for breakfast instead of coffe or tea…
P. S. If there is a knock to be made on the Produttori wines at all, it would be only that few of them (even the old ones, by the way) ever seem to attain the secondary and tertiary complexity of the very best Nebbioli, but given the value, drinkability and availability, that is hardly a drawback.