TN: 1998 Gaja Langhe Nebbiolo Costa Russi (Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Langhe DOC)

WINE TALK
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  • 1998 Gaja Langhe Nebbiolo Costa Russi - Italy, Piedmont, Langhe, Langhe DOC
    I’ve had this wine several times but my impression was less favourable this time. A vigorous decanting (it threw major sediment) six hours before tasting. Friends I served the wine to blind thought it might be a Bordeaux blend. Bright, very deep, dark red. On bouquet, a lot of dark berry fruit, crème de cassis, furniture polish, dark chocolate and tobacco. A Cabernet nose of rich and ripe fruit with an oak artefact. A slightly stewed fruit element. On palate, serious architecture and fruit. Huge volume and mid palate weight. Flirting with over-ripeness. Black fruited and tannic, but the tannins suave and fine grained. Not really showing a lot of Nebbiolo typicity. A Barolo-loving friend questioned my description of the wine so I took him a glass the next day. He said ‘Just look at the colour. There’s a huge mass of fruit here. It’s just incredibly young’. Hold for at least five years.

Posted from CellarTracker

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I wouldn’t expect it to show typicity - they add Barbera to the Nebbiolo, right?

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5%

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I had yesterday the plain Barbaresco of the same vintage. Definitely on the overripe side, pruney both on the nose and the palate, and to me it lost most of its Nebbiolo typicity. Too bad.

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At 95%+ Nebbiolo, I’d expect and hope for more Nebbiolo typicity … I’ve seen it before in Costa Russis … Like Gilberto, I think it’s vintage related. Somewhere I read Angelo Gaja describe 1998 for them as ‘California-like’. I wouldn’t give up on the 1998 Costa Russi, just give it more time (if I had any more bottles …).

Cheers, Howard

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A 1998 Sori San Lorenzo during the year was big and young, but quite “normal” tasting - i.e. excellent already and identifiably Piemonte.

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Yes, same experience with this wine about a year ago: big and young rather than overripe, darker colour than the typical nebbiolo. Yes, probably identifiable as Piemonte, but not really typical. (And with this I have exhausted my experience with Gaja, two wines all in all, and I don’t plan to extend it further).

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Three thoughts:

  1. The vintage did not help matters. As time goes on (and not a lot of time at that), 1998 is shaping up as one of the weaker vintages in the long string of very good to outstanding vintages (save 2002/2003) beginning in 1996.

  2. The Costa Russi is deliberately vinified for those who enjoy “internationally styled” wines that show little or no sense of place, so for me, it is the worst, rather than the best, introduction to Gaja’s Nebbiolo wines. I am guessing that the first thing that Gaja’s kids will do when the mantle passes to them is more a more traditionally styled Costa Russi. Of the three single-vineyard wines formerly known as Barbareschi, the Costa Russi is the one that ends up in the closeout bin. This does not make Costa Russi a bad wine; far from it. It is just very different from its stablemates, San Lorenzo and Sori’ Tildin. (If you want wines that obliterate Nebbiolo typicity, try Altare’s! :slight_smile: )

  3. Enough already with the Barbera canard. This is foolishness passed around by those who neither buy nor drink Gaja’s five single-vineyard wines for which Gaja reserves the right to add up to 5% Barbera. Item one is that anyone who thinks that they can detect the Barbera in those wines…ANYONE…flatters himself or herself. What is detected is the fact that Gaja’s wines are different in many ways from rank-and-file traditional Nebbioli. Without belaboring the point here, a convincing argument can be made that exacting, open-minded producers like Gaja and Sandrone (and not the “Barolo Boys” like Clerico, Altare, Scavino, Rivetti and others) have IMPROVED upon traditionalism without abandoning it. Maria-Teresa Mascarello and Roberto Conterno have quietly (and perhaps secretly) done the same thing in recent years. (I would love to know if anything other than vintage makes Marta Rinaldi’s wines different from her father’s.) Back to Barbera, however, it is important to study one’s Piemonte winemaking history to understand the role that Barbera has played. Beppe Rinaldi and his father both dumped Barbera must, and maybe juice as well, into the now-beloved and traditionalist darling wines at that address. Others surely did the same thing without any modern-day Nebbiolo fans knowing it. (Since Rinaldi’s wines, unlike Gaja’s, were so cheap for so long, maybe that keeps happy customers from tasting the Barbera in Rinaldi wines. :slight_smile: ) Other older producers also made “field blend” Barolo or Barbaresco that might contain a little late-ripening Barbera (or perhaps they engaged in a “split-the-difference” harvest in less than ideal years). Hell, hard-core Nebbiolo lovers are drinking some Baroli that were cut with Syrah, Aglianico or other alien juice. Nebbiolo typicity takes a little work to kill in my experience…