Ok, while I’ve been drinking and enjoying wine for a decade or so, to a large extent my wife and I have tried to stay within our comfort zone. Recently, I’ve been trying to change that and try more wines. So, I need some advice on what I tasted and if it’s an indication the bottle had turned or needs to be decanted or simply is the taste that wine has.
A couple nights ago I opened a bottle of 2012 Vietti Barbera d’Alba Tre Vigne. While I drank a glass with dinner, my wife wasn’t at all impressed.
My first inclination is to say it tasted astringent or a bit vinegar like, but if so, only mildly. It smelled perfectly normal, but it had an initial acidic bite when it first hit your tongue, but then other flavors came through.
Normally, when I get a bottle like this, I assume it’s bad and don’t finish it. In this case, I decided to try an experiment. I put a rubber cork in it (no argon gas or other treatment) and left it on the counter overnight. I tried it the next day, and some of the acidic bit was gone.
I then tried it again tonight, and most of the bite was gone. My wife tasted it and said it now tasted good.
So, what am I tasting? Is this a bad wine? Is this a wine that needed to be decanted?
If it does better the next night, likely a decant would have helped it the first night… having an open (but resealed) bottle sit overnight is basically a version of decanting. And personally, I would have decanted that Vietti Barbera…
That was my thinking. I haven’t had many Italian reds other than Amerone. I’ve had Arneis and some of the Sicilian whites over the years, but almost no reds.
I know some reading I did on the Barbera says that it can be very acidic.
The reason I went ahead and recorked and let it sit, is I knew that would to some degree (not sure if more or less) show me what the wine would have been like decanted, after being exposed to oxygen and sitting.
Barbera is naturally pretty high in acid, so it’s not to everyone’s taste. (The acid is like lemon or green apple rather than vinegar.) I would guess what happened is that, with some air, the fruit aromas and flavors came more to the fore so the acid wasn’t so conspicuous and you both liked it better.
You didn’t say if you were drinking this with food or not, but that would obviously be another possible factor.
I’ve been drinking a fair deal of Beaujolais and other gamay, and young Northern Rhone syrah, over the last year or so. None of these are fancy wines, but I almost always find that they improve in the glass over the course of a meal and, usually, overnight in the refrigerator.
Not sure what you normally drink. But many Italian wines, and wines from Europe, have a higher acid profile. This can be somewhat off putting at first to people unfamiliar to European wines. Barbera is a great food wine partly because of slightly higher acid profile. I really don’t consider it very acidic. But I drink mostly Italian wines.
The Vietti Barbera you had is the entry level Barbera from the Alba area. Known for producing wines that are rich and smooth. Mostly soft and easy drinking. Often with a touch of new oak.
This wine should not need decanting. But if it improves it for you, throw it into a decanter. Some tech info
The first night I had it with a pork dish. Tonight, I had it with a steak salad that had spicy guacamole on it. When I took a sip right after some spicy guacamole, it tasted great. My wife doesn’t like spicy food, but I had her try a bit of the guacamole and then the wine, and she agreed. In general, even though it was more acidic without food, she said it tasted good tonight (unlike the first night).
At home, we’ve been drinking a lot of Malbec and Rioja, sometimes a California Zinfandel. When I travel to Western Europe 5-6 times a year, I’m generally drinking European wines. Sometimes we will have a Malbec or Rioja, but typically it’s a German or French red, occasionally an Amerone or other Italian red (typically one of our Europeans pick the wines, it might be something regional or they are familiar with).
Currently, we drink very little domestic wine, red or white, but have stayed in a fairly narrow band of wines (type/region) that my wife likes and are just starting to expand.
It is one of 2-3 most planted grapes in Italy. And finds it best home in Piedmont. It offers many different things depending on origin and how the winemaker styles it. And makes for a great starting point into the wines of Italy and Piedmont. Vietti is one of the top producers. Aggressive use of new oak can be a problem with some producers.
In my experience, young Italian wines often benefit from oxygen. I feel like the various structural components of red wine knit together with aeration moreso in Italy than anywhere else. This can come across as a wine “softening”.
I bought the Asti last week after not having sat with a Vietti Barbera in a while, so I cracked it…while not the Alba an interesting sample of current Vietti Barbera.
This was a little riper than I have had in the past from Vietti, but all wine is ‘bigger’ now so I just need to get over it. The wine for me was pretty big on night one and did finally settle down by day three. I actually thought it to be moderate on acid, but the wine overall out of balance because it has so much stuffing to work around and the acid pokes out.
I worked in Italian restaurants for years and would try all the BTG wines so I gained a infatuation with Vietti, my oldest memories are with the 94’ Dolcetto and Barbera’s, years ago and it was a bit modern, but certainly balanced and lip smacking delicious. This wine not so lip smacking delicious but I think it needs at least another year to sort itself out.
By and large the majority of the pre 00’ Alba’s were fatter than Asti’s but they were still fairly light compared to todays standards. It seems all of the wines they make now are meant for at least a short term cellar vs. being drinkable on release.
My first thought was, what is your comfort zone? If it is ripe, slightly flabby wines then it’s simply a case of stylistic/varietal differences. All the replies kind of support that thought. The wine sounds correct for what it is.
And you might simply not like the flavor profile of Barbera. As much as I love high acid reds I’ve never been a fan of Barbera (though I had one I loved recently - an ungrafted bottling that Josh Leader opened).
One good thing about Barbera is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to try the wines. Most are going to be < $25. And very few are > $50. You seemed to like the wine with some air and food. Imagine how good it might have been with Piedmont cuisine.