2006 Giuseppe Mascarello Bricco Dolcetto

O

Oswaldo Costa

Oswaldo Costa
2006 Giuseppe Mascarello Dolcetto dAlba Bricco (Castiglione Falletto) 14.0%
From half clay, half chalk soils. Last November we tasted an 07 Bricco at the winery that had been open a week and was still going strong. This 06, freshly opened at a local restaurant and showing an extra half point of alcohol (these normally run 13.0-13.5%), had a throttling nose of raspberry jam infused with eucalyptus and guava. No dulcet tones here, and as jammy as a guava-spiked Carmenre tasted a few months ago. The color, too, showed that purplosity that Otto posits, if I understand him correctly, as the hallmark of the overripe and/or doctored, heightening the sense of categorical disconnect. How can this be an offering from the venerable and traditional house of Guiseppe Mascarello? There was tannic grip and sufficient acidity, but the nuovo mondo jamminess just kept pushing the wrong bottoni. Is 2006 is turning into a Piemontese bizarro world, with all this no cru from me Argentina from Giacosa and Produttori?
 
Just to clarify: I don't declare it so, I have just noticed a correlation, and as we all know correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation.
 
There is no connection between purpolisity (thank you, Oswaldo, for the neologism) and over-ripeness or fakery in the cellar. Not with Dolcetto, anyway.
 
It's actually Otto's second good coinage, Oliver, after pinosity.

Since most South American fruit bombs are quite purple, the correlation he noticed instantly resonated with me.
 
Oswaldo, I hate to say it, but neither are my coinages. I've pilfered both from the previous incarnation of this board (sadly, I can't remember who first used the terms, so I can't credit the inventor).
 
originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
Oswaldo, I hate to say it, but neither are my coinages. I've pilfered both from the previous incarnation of this board (sadly, I can't remember who first used the terms, so I can't credit the inventor).
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Working as I do in a field rife with reactions named for people, I can attest to the fact that the names associated with those reactions rarely coincide with the names of the inventors. So too, Otto, in this case: as the promoter of those terms you'll be associated with them regardless of their origins in the muzzy prehistory of Wine Disorder.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MarkS:
Can you really tell the difference in a 1/2 point of alcohol?
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Not with any confidence but I had just tasted, at the winery, the subsequent vintage with less alcohol, and it had better balance, so in that context that seemed at least part of the explanation. These wines should be lean, and the higher the alcohol, the more generic they become (like so many other grapes).
 
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