Inadvertent $35 Nebbiolo tasting

J

Josh Beck

Josh Beck
This started off as just wanting to check out the Vietti and a random bottle from a friend, and grew. Overall, the par quality was really incredible with 3 fantastic wines, 3 good to quite good wines and only one dud.

05 Guido Porro Lazzairasco - Killer. Old school with red fruits and tar and dusty, powerful tannins. Lots of depth and purity. Less polished than the others but more pure, ala comparing G Rinaldi to Giacosa, perhaps. Amazing value.

04 Fratelli Ponte Barolo - Pretty good wine but lacks a little freshness / verve and shows a touch of oak and extraction. Perfectly acceptable, ultimately, but outshone by others.

04 De Forville Loreto - Mildly corked and bretty as well. Yay.

04 Cantina del Pino Barbaresco - Really excellent. Deep, truffled, tarry and rose laden nose. Great power and depth but silky and not weighty or extracted. A slight, discreet touch of wood, perhaps a wee bit more than the Vajra but still at a level I would say is extremely discreet and not the least offensive.

06 Vietti Castiglione - Minorly disappointing, though still good. Red fruited and supple but with a decent amount of oak showing in the form of sweet, buttery vanilla both on the nose and palate, then some drying tannin on the finish. Ultimately the oak really interferes. I recall the 04 being a better wine than this but it's been a year or so since I had it.

05 Vajra Albe - Really a very nice wine. Bright and sappy red fruit. Very floral and perfumey on the nose with talcum / face powder notes. Lithe and bright and energetic on the palate with very manageable sweet tannin. A tiny hint of wood in there as well but very discreet.

2006 Ferrando Carema Etichetta Bianca - Second experience with this wine. A very bright, pure red fruited wine with a supple and medium bodied palate. Floral and fresh on the nose and incredibly dusty. Very nice. On day two it showed an odd lifted and mildly vegetal note that made us question a hint of green vs. a bit of VA vs. a bit of stem inclusion? It was a bit distracting but wasn't there on day one when the wine was quite excellent. The first bottle a few weeks back did not show this note at all over two days.
 
Interesting. Thank you for these notes, Josh.

Have you also had the Prod. di Barbaresco 2006? It's in the same price range and I was wondering what your perceptions of it are.
 
Uh, I am not Josh, but I am pretty familiar with the Produttori di Barbaresco 2006 Barbaresco.

Personally, I preferred the 2005 of the same. I really liked that release, which was lifted and aromatic, and a bit lean. Virtually no one agrees with me about this, though. 2005 was not a lauded vintage in general. Also, the deal with 2006 is that with the bottles that came to this country, the juice that would normally go into the single cru bottlings was put in the normal ("Torre") release. Produttori said they didn't want to release the single crus for commercial reasons. They had released them in 2004 and 2005, and there was a concern about flooding the market (Nebbiolo doesn't sell through that same way that other categories do).

Anyway, the 2006 got a fair amount of acclaim because people feel like they are getting a deal with the single cru juice for the declassified price. But I have to say that the 2006 is my least favorite Torre bottling in some time. It seems soupy and lacking in shape to me. I really miss the zip of the 2005.

As I mentioned, no one agrees with me about this, so I mention it while expecting folks to do as they please.

Josh: Cantina del Pino is pretty great across the board, but I thought the declassified Nebbiolo in 2007 was pretty great for the dough. I buy the Ovello bottling from Cantina del Pino on the regular.
 
Thank you, Levi. I am hoping that Josh replies so that I can calibrate what he has said about the other wines to a wine that I know.

I agree with you that the 06 was lusher than the 05 (meaning, more viscous, sweeter, merely tangy when it could have been grippy) but I can find ways to drink both of them.
 
Levi, do you feel Cantina del Pino has evolved or changed styles from their early wines (97, 98, 99) to the more recent? I haven't had the opportunity to try the newer ones but the last few bottles of the older ones I've opened have been not terribly pleasant.
 
Jeff, I've had the 06 Produttori normale and quite liked it. I thought it was at least as good as the 01 and 04. Perhaps a bit fleshier but I find that the Produttori wines can be quite hard and they clearly shutdown for lengthy periods, so I perhaps didn't ultimately mind so much having one that was more giving. It still features powerful tannins relative to, say, the Cantina del Pino or Vietti or Vajra. It's a good wine for sure.

I've not had the 05 Produttori Normale in a while but recall it being very hard and unyielding. Not to say bad, but hard to enjoy when I opened it. Overall, though, I think I agree with Levi that many 05 in Piedmont, particularly in Barolo, are really spectacular wines, very fresh and energetic but with no lack of power. I visited a good handful of traditionalists in 09 and we tasted a lot of 04/05/06 and talked a lot about it. Most producers I visited preferred their 05's to their 06's and said that the preference for 06 was an American thing. It was an interesting comment, no doubt. I like all three vintages but I thus far prefer 04 and 05 to 06 in most cases.

FWIW, I paid $20 for the 06 Produttori (from Garagiste IIRC) which I thought was a pretty screaming deal. I already have a modest stash of 04 Cantina and 05 Vajra but I added some 05 Guido Porro to the cellar today, and I'll definitely keep buying Vajra and Cantina going forward, and I look forward to tasting more vintages of Guido Porro.
 
The really interesting takeaways from this tasting were-

Guido Porro was a huge discovery. That bottle was an amazing deal. As amazing at it's price point as I find Cavallotto and F Rinaldi to be at theirs.

I've always enjoyed Cantina del Pino but seeing it in a lineup really was enlightening, so much elegance and depth and purity. I now give them more credit.

The Vajra Albe was much more elegant than the young Bricco Viole bottlings I've had. Really a beautiful, graceful wine and with tremendous perfume and complexity for the price.

I've always been a fan of Vietti, and I remain a fan, but I would have expected it to show better in this lineup. Perhaps youth, perhaps more oak in 06, perhaps just the lineup but this bottle underwhelmed.
 
I also prefer '05 Vajra Albe to '06 Vajra Albe. The '06 is the fleshier wine, to its detriment.

Vajra's involvement with Luigi Baudana, however, produced one of my very favorite '06s, the Baudana "Baudana".

Mr. Lawton: you should check back in with Cantina del Pino. I think it would be hard to not like the wines.
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
Uh, I am not Josh, but I am pretty familiar with the Produttori di Barbaresco 2006 Barbaresco.

Personally, I preferred the 2005 of the same. I really liked that release, which was lifted and aromatic, and a bit lean. Virtually no one agrees with me about this, though. 2005 was not a lauded vintage in general. Also, the deal with 2006 is that with the bottles that came to this country, the juice that would normally go into the single cru bottlings was put in the normal ("Torre") release. Produttori said they didn't want to release the single crus for commercial reasons. They had released them in 2004 and 2005, and there was a concern about flooding the market (Nebbiolo doesn't sell through that same way that other categories do).

Anyway, the 2006 got a fair amount of acclaim because people feel like they are getting a deal with the single cru juice for the declassified price. But I have to say that the 2006 is my least favorite Torre bottling in some time. It seems soupy and lacking in shape to me. I really miss the zip of the 2005.

As I mentioned, no one agrees with me about this, so I mention it while expecting folks to do as they please.

Josh: Cantina del Pino is pretty great across the board, but I thought the declassified Nebbiolo in 2007 was pretty great for the dough. I buy the Ovello bottling from Cantina del Pino on the regular.
Click to expand...

You aren't alone. I also bought a six pack of the '06 normale and, albeit based on just one bottle, found the wine a little diffuse and lacking freshness and lift. I also felt the alcohol perked up a bit at the end. Certainly enjoyable but I'm not nearly as jazzed about the QPR than before I tried it. To me, it's worth about what I paid for it - $24 each. I never tried the '04 or '05 so can't comment on those.
 
This was a great tasting.
I just bought a couple bottles of the Guido Porro and now I'm hunting down more of the Cantina.
 
originally posted by Josh Beck:
The really interesting takeaways from this tasting were-

Guido Porro was a huge discovery. That bottle was an amazing deal. As amazing at it's price point as I find Cavallotto and F Rinaldi to be at theirs.
Click to expand...

yep

The Vajra Albe was much more elegant than the young Bricco Viole bottlings I've had. Really a beautiful, graceful wine and with tremendous perfume and complexity for the price.
Click to expand...

yep
 
vajra's bricco viole is meant for the long, long haul. comparing a way too young bricco viole to vajra normale is apples to oranges.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top