Sadly I have heard the same news from my truffle consultant. I am on the way to Italy as we speak and am supposed to hunt some down for a friend. Bill do you know if the weather elsewhere in Italy was better (i.e., rainier) than in Alba, so that there might be something else worth buying?
Heard the same at a market in Strasbourg. Bust year.
Yep. I suppose we will have to console ourselves with some nice flights of Giacosa Riserva and Monfortino … At that point we will have suppressed the mediocrity of the truffles.
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This reminds me of another first world problem faced by a friend recently,. He declined to partake in a very juicy offer for Krug MV maynums that I tried to bring him in on because they wouldn’t fit in his new Subzero wine fridge. Oh the horror…
Carl, this I can do. I had a well-known Burgundy producer and a friend of his, both of whom share our passion for Piemonte (apologies to Matt Kramer’s cookbook), over for a 5-hour lunch yesterday, and, after some effort, I was able to deliver some passably good truffles, along with late-season porcini and the following wines: 2011 Ettore Germano Alta Langa Metodo Classico, 1971 Produttori del Barbaresco Montestefano Riserva, 1978 Cappellano Barolo, 1974 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo and 1986 Giacosa Barolo Falletto Riserva. Details at 11…
A Klapp and a Klapper walk into a bar [fill in the most apropos joke]
And the joke should not involve anything about Klapp’s junior college alma mater crushing my Gators last night
I suspect that it would have to start, “A Klapp and a Klapper walk into an enoteca, and…”, and while the punch line might not be at all funny, it might go something like, “cleaned out the entire inventory of Giacosa red labels.” 
Yes Bill, in my family’s telling of it that’s exactly how the joke goes, and one of those underrated (at least over here) 86s would not be a bad way to get started.
Your friend is playing a prank on you. You’re supposed to use a pig or a dog.
Winning.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but a UK wine forumite purchased some young trees which were infused with truffle spores. He initially got enthused about training his dog to find the truffles, but then realised he didn’t need the dog to find the truffle trees, as he would know where he planted them!
IIRC a human eye may spot unusually dry soil where the truffles are, but a dog’s nose will indeed be better to tell if there is a truffle there or not - so his original idea wasn’t so daft.
Bill this is a helpful post because for the second time in my life I ordered white truffles a couple of weeks ago and the new people said it smelled too strong (it didn’t, but I used to feel that way about truffles) and my reaction was, I tasted almost nothing. Now I understand the contradiction.
Haha. My truffle man’s truffle man came up with virtually nothing so I am free to hunt down bollito misto at as many restaurants as I can. Wait till next year as Casey Stengel used to say.
Last Saturday’s lunch menu:
Sushi-cut smoked salmon from a French artisanal producer with Ettore Germano Alta Langa Metodo Classico spumante
With the 1978 Cappellano Barolo:
Carne cruda with shaved truffles
Pheasant pate in aspic
With the 1974 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo:
Agnolotti dal plin with Normandy butter and shaved truffles (not normally a truffle dish for me and the plin were the star here, but these were very delicate agnolotti, we had the truffles to spare and it worked quite well)
Tajarin with Normandy butter and shaved truffles
With the 1986 Giacosa Barolo Falletto Riserva: fried porcini
Panna cotta (with the bottle of Moscato d’ Asti in the refrigerator, completely forgotten but not missed)
Superb car-trunk-ripened Epoisses, courtesy of my guest from Burgundy (AFTER the wine was gone!)
Fresh grissini and crusty, still-warm bread throughout
A quick run-down on the wines:
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Missing from the lunch was a fifth scheduled bottle, a 1971 Produttori del Barbaresco Montestefano Riserva. I opened and decanted the bottle, and while I am no Neal Martin, flinging wine descriptors that originate in a thesaurus instead of the wine itself against the wall and seeing what, if anything, sticks, the aroma that this wine gave off was singular and unmistakable: leftover roast chicken that was put in a cold oven to keep the flies off of it, and forgotten…for three weeks! That, plus there was a hint of madeira, but the madeira was clearly not the crux of the problem. After 4 hours in an open decanter, the aroma improved significantly but the funky chicken never really stopped dancing, and on the palate, the wine, big and fruity and of a deep, opaque, not-quite-ruby shade of purple, bore a bit of forgotten-chicken flavor as well. But for the flaw (one that I have never experienced in any other wine, by the way), this was another old great-vintage Produttori that would have had another decade or two ahead of it. The first taste of the 1978 Cappellano condemned the Produttori to the kitchen sink.
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1978 Cappellano Barolo-if I had it to do over again (and I might), I would have moved the Giacosa into this spot and paired the Cappellano last with the fungi fritti, if for no other reason than to give the Cappellano another hour or two of decanter time. As it was, we still had some of this wine left to check in on at regular intervals during the meal, and it continued to open and evolve magnificently, so there was no real regret; it was just that the Giacosa was in perfect drinking shape after roughly 5 hours in the decanter, while the Cappellano did not get to the same place until near the end of the meal. This was by far the youngest of the four wines (it was purchased ex-cantina last year from Augusto Cappellano), a little tight at first but possessed of perfect balance and pure, initially restrained fruit that continued to blossom and evolve almost minute by minute, soon showing a fresh cinnamon element on the nose and the palate. It paired so well with the first two courses (which were, to be honest, attractions in their own right) that I ceased to analyze and just enjoyed the wine, the food and the conversation, but I will say that the tannins were so fine and well-integrated that I could barely detect them, and yet, the wine is still so young and large-boned that they must have been lurking somewhere. I will give my next bottle of this one a good 12 hours before serving. The guests were sufficiently impressed that both said they would have been delighted with the experience had the Cappellano been the only wine served.
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1974 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo-we thought this was in some ways the flip side of the Montestefano. There was also a mild madeira note present, but quite often with old, traditional Nebbioli like this one, the madeira note seems to sink to the bottom of the glass (not literally, of course) and one is allowed to enjoy sip after sip of the wine with only the slightest aftertaste. This was as close to a pop and pour as I have experienced with an old Barolo, so I immediately double-decanted it back into bottle and re-corked it after giving it only enough air to get a sense of the wine. I thought that the wine might have faded with more air, but I need not have worried. The madeira note faded on the nose after the wine was poured, but it was replaced by a delicate and pleasant, but not particularly complex, aroma. The palate was another story: huge, rich, sweet, almost chewy (as one guest described it) fruit that would have surely EXPLODED from the glass, had Antonio Galloni been drinking it. The sweetness of the wine set off an extended discussion of residual sugar, and this was a textbook example of the glorious paradox of great, old, dry red wines: something that was vinified to be completely dry gives an impression of sweetness on the palate not unlike biting into a piece of perfectly ripe fruit. This was a normale, and I cannot say that it continued to evolve much over time, nor did it exhibit a range of typical, tertiary Nebbiolo scents and tastes. It did not need to. It drank as well with the two pasta and truffle courses as a wine could, and its richness complimented the generous butter in the pasta as well as a good Chardonnay might. The producer observed that what he loved about many of the Rinaldi wines that he had tasted was a slight rusticity that translates to “soulfulness” for him. (He did not say so, but perhaps there may be some lurking implication that the clean and pure style of, say, the wines of Roberto Conterno and Maria-Teresa Mascarello, as good as they are, could be the stuff of American Bandstand rather than Soul Train.
) This was indeed a wine possessed of soul, one whose capacity for delivering pleasure forgave its one relatively minor flaw and any lack of tertiary fireworks. -
1986 Bruno Giacosa Barolo Falletto di Serralunga d’Alba Riserva-one can say many things about a pristine Giacosa Falletto Riserva that has now entered what promises to be a lengthy window of peak drinking, but honestly, unless one has an opportunity to taste one, words are pretty much useless. The tannins were fully resolved, and the balance of the acidity and the fresh, sweet fruit perfect. Everything one expects and hopes for was there: a tar note that remains very much in the background compared to most other Nebboli, a floral component on the nose that seems to waft back and forth between rose and violet, varying in intensity and complexity as it does, and the dominance of pure, sweet cherry fruit on the palate. For me, the Giacosa was the most complete wine of the three, something of a right-time, right-place, right-provenance phenomenon, whereas the Rinaldi had minor provenance problems, the Cappellano, as great as it was, clearly had not reached its peak and the poor Produttori suffered the fatal poultry problem. It also got style points for pairing perfectly with the fried porcini, which have some sort of umami thing going on that makes them seem both earthy and a little sweet, although in fairness, I suspect that all three of the Baroli would have gotten equal style points with the mushrooms. Il Maestro’s handiwork caused the wine producer to wax academic, noting that (and I hope that I do not misquote him here) some in the Piemonte have tried reductive winemaking in the past, and some are at it today, but that nobody has yet come close to Giacosa’s success with the technique, and it is perhaps that, above all other considerations, that sets his wines apart. Food for thought it was, and thought for food as well! A fine time was had by all, it seemed…
Awesome post Bill. Thanks for sharing
Ok, tomorrow is Friday…let’s call it White Friday wondering how the Black Truffles are doing?
There is some hope for the black ones from Perigord. My last whites from alba were great aromatically. Flavorwise they lacked intensity. Tasted Tuesday.
With occasional exceptions, Don, that has been the story with tartufi bianchi this year…