Kent
These wines are best qpr when purchased in Italy where the cru sells for approx 23 euro at cellar door.
I have fondness for Rabaja and Asili and to slightly lesser extent Montestefano and Montefico.
2008 is brilliant and although not showy now it should be on you buying list. I think it is the best vintage of all of the above.
Next would be 2004. And then 2007 for reasons given by many posters above.
I agree with Bill ( even within my limited experience ) that these wines will not be able to reach the dazzling heights of Giacosa. So to taste greatness there should also be representation from Giacosa in the cellar.
Is this their opinion on how weak of a vintage 2011 is? The 2010 Produttori is a very good $28 Nebbiolo but a weak wine of the vintage.
Drinking the 2010 normale right now. Pretty, but quite tight.
Right now I would agree with that. 15 years from now, not so much.
It is both: vintage character and palate preference.
They reckon it’s a try before you buy vintage (2011).
Interesting discussion here.
Re Jim and the 2001 Ovello, I recently served it and the 2007 Ovello blind to friends. The 2007 seemed the more open, accessible wine:
https://www.cellartracker.com/event.asp?iEvent=29580
I asked Aldo Vacca about his 2001s and he said: “Yes, 2001 is more closed than expected. I think it is a vintage where tannins are maturing at a slower pace and the fruit is not as vivid as more recent great vintages”.
Re the 2011s (see my notes above), I think that the vintage is a good one, a bit better than '09, but not as good as '04, '07 and '08. At the pricing here in NZ, means I’ve bought en primeur '11 Riservas, rather than Normales. I’d rather pay a little extra for Poras and Pajes to drink earlier than Normales (I understand that the pricing differential is much greater in the US).
Thinking further about Kent’s OP, I would also be tempted by '97-'01s, due to the bottle age you get there (I’m confident that the '01s will eventually open fully).
Cheers, Howard
I generally like the wines. I do dislike the strategy of missing good to great vintages just to boost sales. I haven’t bought a bottle since the 06 debacle. Actually that’s a bit of a lie I do buy the Langhe.
My favorite Riserva is the Ovello.
What was the 06 debacle? (Just started buying Produttori with the 10).
It was not a debacle. They made a late decision to not bottle the crus, and so there were then bottlings of the normale, some of which had different (or zero) levels of the cru juice. People got their noses out of joint because they thought they were not getting the “best” wine. It was a silly controversy. I have had 4 different versions of the 2006 normale to this point, including the original zero cru juice version, and they are all really good.
While most of the discussion above is about the single crus (and the OP asked about the crus), let me give a shout out for the normale. Awfully good year in and year out for about $30. One of the great wine values of the wine world.
Agreed. Ages so well.
Thanks for all the insight guys. Seems I need to buy everything. Really enjoyed the thread…seems I have waited too long to get abourd the Produttori train.
David. I agree that the 06 wines were very good, or at least the bottles I have had, but why make it so complicated? Everyone knew the Riservas would be great but they chose not to bottle them to protect their pricing. It just seemed like a slap in the face to their followers.
David, you’ve said this a couple of times now. I have heard it suggested by consumers that Produttori ‘skips’ Riserva vintages to ‘protect the brand’.
However, I’ve never heard anything like this from Aldo Vacca. Whenever I’ve heard him speaking about a non-Riserva vintage he’s said that it’s due to the vintage. For example, in 2010 he said Produttori decided not to do the Riservas because the Normale would have been too dilute without the Riserva juice.
Do you have any evidence that this was not Produttori’s motivation in 2006?
Cheers, Howard
They made the decision late. Who is the everyone you speak of who knew the Riservas would ALL be great? Remember that they do the all or none philosophy.
I think it’s important to remember that the Produttori are a co-op and that decisions need to consider some different commercial dynamics that emerge in these types of structures. There is a very strong collective rationale to maintain the quality of the normale over and above the crus. Yes, in challenging years they could make great crus, but the normale probably plays a far more important role in sustaining the model of the co-op: there will be many members, producing a lot of grapes and there is an imperative to sustain demand for this supply of juice. To achieve this they need to ensure a floor on base quality of the normale; if this slips and consumers lose ‘trust’ in its quality, it could split the business too far between high value crus and eroding value of the normale. This might lead to conflicts of interest between growers in more favoured sites and the rest. In long-run could be difficult to sustain. To me their strategy given the structure makes a lot of sense.
And I can only imagine the thread here if they skimmed too much to produce crus one year and the Riserva was not up to snuff. “Oh my gosh, how could they release such a lousy wine…I’m never buying their wines again…”
I’ve been thinking about how to describe the Produttori Barbarescos. I still am not sure of quite the right word. I want to say that they are “quintessential Nebbiolo”. When I look up “quintessential”, it says “Representing the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class.” Now “perfect” has such a specific connotation in wine since Parker started using it synonymously with 100 points. I don’t mean that, but rather more like the best example. I once wrote in another thread here that if someone knew nothing about Rock n Roll and you could play them the music of only one band, I would choose the Rolling Stones. For my palate, Produttori wines have never quite reached the pinnacle of the best Giacosa Barbarescos, but they are more typical, less a distinctive expression of the winemaker and more exemplary of Barbaresco. If you could serve someone the wines of only one producer to have them make a decision as to whether they like Nebbiolo, it would be the wines of Produtorri del Barbaresco.
I tend to think of them as benchmarks with a small b. Just like you, I think of them as the wines to serve someone to gage their feelings about nebbiolo.