G Conterno and ripeness

If anything, Francesco Rinaldi would seem to be the producer amongst those you mention whose style has inched up a bit riper of late. At least to the eye of this beholder.
Click to expand...

Yes, but not in a bad way, right? Didn't these used to be tough, rustic animals not so long ago? So a little bit of extra ripeness can finesse the nebbiolo better? It's not as if they've taken to barrique.
 
originally posted by MarkS:
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
Also, do Jeff and Eric do a lot of Barolo tastings?
Click to expand...

Exactly. These are folks who make pinot noir (and from California at that!).
Click to expand...
Which happen to be California's best pinot noirs and at least as good as many grand cru Burgundies.
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
Do you drink recent vintages of Marcarini and dig on them?
Click to expand...

Levi:
Is this supposed to mean that Marcarini is going soft and sweet as well?
I haven't had anything younger than 1998 but I have younger vintages in the cellar.
Thanks.
E
 
I have liked Marcarini quite well, both younger and older. I obviously didn't have the old vintages in their youth. The younger wines I find a bit on the softer side - not oaky, not overtly ripe, perhaps just gentle. Lacking the masculine structure of, say, Cavallotto Bricco Boschis, lacking the complexity and depth of current F Rinaldi bottlings, and not reaching into the strata of Monprivato and Pie Rupestris, say. Still very good, though, and I buy a few bottles of La Serra and Brunate most years. I think of them perhaps at the same qualitative and QPR level as Oddero.

Speaking of slightly lesser known slightly more traditional producers in slightly more recent vintages, I've had a spate of bad luck w/ corked and oxidized bottles of Brovia lately, anyone drink the 04/05/06 cru wines and have comments? I anticipate good things if I can get over the bad bottle streak.
 
originally posted by MarkS:
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
Also, do Jeff and Eric do a lot of Barolo tastings?
Click to expand...

Exactly. These are folks who make pinot noir (and from California at that!).
Click to expand...

And given that they hang around with Kevin Harvey I'm going to make a wild guess and say that they have considerable experience with European wine. Of course it might be mostly Burgundy.

I'm curious now about this reported shift in F. Rinaldi. Esp. since as mentioned I fell in love with a '95 Cannubio last year (the fact that I'm still thinking about it means it made quite an impression). I'm guessing this is pre-shift?
 
On the F Rinaldi, I've had a couple of awesome 96 Cannubios and some older bottles as well. Also a spate of cooked 96's, and I've read others have had the same issue, presumably a big batch of them in the US.

I read that the qualitative shift, though, started in the post 99 pre 04 time frame. I've not had anything between 97-03. I visited the winery and tasted the 05 and 06 in cask and drank 04 from bottle and drank a couple bottles off lists on that trip as well, came home and have since bought the Brunate and Cannubi by the case. One producer, 2 cases per year, 3 years straight, is about as big as I go. For me these are stunning wines these days and at $45-50 they are mind blowing. Edge out Cavallotto Bricco Boschis in that price range for my tastes though I buy a good bit of Cavallotto too.

They're not that expensive, try any of the recent Brunate or Cannubi, I'd be curious what others think of this.
 
I just did a search of my corked/cooked records, and there were only 2 Brovia bottles in it, which given the volume we open, is pretty tiny. One was a Valmaggione Nebbiolo, and the other was a Solatio.

We open up quite a bit of normale Barolo and Villero, with the occasional Ca' Mia, and none of those have been problematic.

I like F Rinaldi pre-shift and post-shift, but I do believe there has been a shift.

Marcarini. Hmmmmmm.
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:
originally posted by MarkS:
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
Also, do Jeff and Eric do a lot of Barolo tastings?
Click to expand...

Exactly. These are folks who make pinot noir (and from California at that!).
Click to expand...

And given that they hang around with Kevin Harvey I'm going to make a wild guess and say that they have considerable experience with European wine. Of course it might be mostly Burgundy.
Click to expand...

Lots of people who drink lots of old world wines get hung up on Nebbiolo for awhile. I see it often. Burgundy has acid. Bordeaux has tannins. Nebbiolo has acid and tannins (by which I mean grape tannins) together and they accentuate each other. It is a very Italian thing to do, I think, to join acid and tannins like that. To select vine material for that. You don't see that in Ribera del Duero, for instance. Barolo is its own deal. There isn't a lot else that is a cognate structurally.
 
So what is the nature of this "shift" at Rinaldi? Some of the old ones are great, the 1985 Cannubio on my all-time list. I don't have much experience with newer ones as I don't make a habit of drinking Barolo young. Are people supposing that they are even better now? Or the other way around?
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
So what is the nature of this "shift" at Rinaldi? Some of the old ones are great, the 1985 Cannubio on my all-time list. I don't have much experience with newer ones as I don't make a habit of drinking Barolo young. Are people supposing that they are even better now? Or the other way around?
Click to expand...

The wines would seem more approachable in youth, less tense, less dry, and perhaps less earthy.
 
originally posted by Bill Lundstrom:
who owned the ceretta vineyard before conterno?
Click to expand...

It was owned by a Swiss importer who had the wine made at Paladino, Sergio Germano tells me. It is next to his property on the Ceretta hill just north of Serralunga.

It's interesting that they made a single-vineyard Langhe Nebbiolo, I've never seen a wine labelled that way before.
 
Does anyone know the reason why Conterno classified this wine as Langhe Nebbiolo rather than Barolo this year? I'm presuming he didn't want to do an extensive elevage. Is he planning to get this classified as Barolo in the future?
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
I just did a search of my corked/cooked records, and there were only 2 Brovia bottles in it, which given the volume we open, is pretty tiny. One was a Valmaggione Nebbiolo, and the other was a Solatio.

We open up quite a bit of normale Barolo and Villero, with the occasional Ca' Mia, and none of those have been problematic.

I like F Rinaldi pre-shift and post-shift, but I do believe there has been a shift.

Marcarini. Hmmmmmm.
Click to expand...

Josh-

Don't let this scare you off. You should add Brovia to the top of your list.

Levi-

Curious, why more Villero than Ca'Mia? (And I had a corked magnum of 1996 Rocche two weeks ago, bummer.)

I haven't had Marcarini in a while and last bought in 2001. What has happened there?

F. Rinaldi has never really done it for me, but I probably didn't try hard enough. No disrespect.
 
Apropos of Conterno, the barbera has seemed to be different lately, but I think climate may have as much to do with that as anything. It's been very different for the past decade.

At $120/btl, it gets hard for me to buy CF, and I love that wine.

Actually, it's my own fault, I shoulda found a more lucrative line of work.
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
I think the gist is that he declassified the wine because he didn't think it was up to G Conterno standards yet.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Thank you and everyone else for this thread. I learned a lot about nebbiolo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top