Following the publication of The Wines of Piemonte, the International Wine and Food Society has asked me to contribute to its vintage and drinkability chart for Piemonte. These are my vintage reflections on beginning this task. I am following in the illustrious footsteps of Nick Belfrage MW, pioneer writer on Italian wine, and Michael Garner, author of one the best books on Barolo and Barbaresco.
The IWFS provides advice to its 6,000 members around the world on the quality of each vintage. More challengingly, each year I will have to make a judgement on where the wines are in their development. The first task is relatively simple. Each vintage is scored on a 1-7 scale for quality. Then each vintage is allocated to one of four categories, ‘not ready to drink’, ‘possible to drink’, ‘current drinking’ and ‘drink up’. But what are the factors to take into account in making these decisions? Are Barolo and Barbaresco sufficiently homogenous to make a single judgement on them? What is the role of personal taste preferences? More broadly, is it possible to make meaningful judgments about readiness to drink?
I have recently had a week in Barolo and Barbaresco to talk to producers and to taste a selection of vintages from the last 20 years. But before I comment on the wines and their development, let’s look at some general issues. Vintage reflections if you will.
Why just Barolo and Barbaresco?
Having recently published a 400-page book on all 60 denominations in Piemonte, I could take umbrage. I would like to extend the range to Alto Piemonte (Gattinara, Ghemme and more) and top quality Barbera. And let’s not forget the region’s ageable white wines. The best Arneis, Cortese, Timorasso, Nascetta and Erbaluce can all age gracefully. But for the IWFS, ‘Piemonte’ means the ageable wines of its two most famous denominations, Barolo and Barbaresco. These wines dominate the market. They are the ones that wine lovers, collectors and investors buy, cellar and, hopefully, drink, so let’s start in the obvious place.
How uniform are the wines of Barolo and Barbaresco?
Both wines have to be made with 100 per cent of the Nebbiolo variety. Further, the two DOCGs are very close to each other: 20 minutes in a car or a mere four miles as the crow flies at the nearest points. A large part of the two denominations share the same geology and broadly share the same climate. However, there are points of difference too. The geology of the Barolo municipalities of Serralunga d’Alba and parts of Monforte d’Alba is very different geology from the rest of Barolo and Barbaresco. Much of Barolo is 100–200 m higher than Barbaresco. The rain usually comes from the west and so more falls on the higher land in Barolo than in Barbaresco. The latter is also slightly warmer. Thus, many common factors affect grape growing but there are also some important differences.
Most vintages of the two denominations can be given a common quality score. One exception was 2014, by recent standards a famously cool and rainy year. Barolo suffered from the rain, but Barbaresco had half the rainfall of Barolo. As a result, Barolo from that year tends to be very restrained aromatically and will take time to develop. Barbaresco is fruitier, much more approachable and on average the quality is higher.
Terroir variation within Barolo DOCG
The Barolo denomination is three times the size of Barbaresco and is less homogenous. As a result, there are marked differences between the relatively early drinkable wines from municipalities such as La Morra and Barolo and the denser, steelier wines with typically higher levels of tannin from Serralunga d’Alba and parts of Monforte d’Alba. There are also important differences in temperature, wind direction and shading within the denomination. The quality of the wines from Serralunga and La Morra in the same year is likely to be broadly similar. However, wines from La Morra itself are likely to be ready to drink earlier than those from Serralunga d’Alba. Wines from the latter are likely to have much longer drinking windows, stretching to decades.
Another important difference is the ageing requirements of the two wines. Barolo can be released after a minimum of three years and two months while Barbaresco can be released a year earlier. The former requires a minimum of 18 months in oak, the latter only 9 months. This reflects the perception that in general (underlined: in general) Barbaresco is a gentler, more approachable wine in its youth than Barolo. These regulations, however, should not usually affect the quality of wines from the same vintage. The subtle differences between the two denominations do however make for large differences in when the wines can best be enjoyed. Most Barbaresco will be ready to drink a year or two earlier than most Barolo.
Winemaking aims
The aims of winemakers can also have a significant impact. Some wineries such as newcomer Davide Fregonese or the more traditional Rocche di Costamagna set out to make wines that will be approachable early. But note that Fregonese is modifying the natural tendency of Serralunga fruit to make powerful wines. By contrast, Rocche di Costamagna accentuates the typical approachability of La Morra fruit. Others, such as Giacomo Conterno or Bruno Giacosa are creating wines for long-term ageing. In general, the trend is towards wines that can be drunk relatively young.
Today, most producers know that wine lovers don’t have the cellar space–or indeed the patience–to keep their bottles for decades before drinking them. Similarly, restaurants can rarely afford to buy and store vintages for later drinking. Fortunately, a warmer climate, better vineyard management and more precise wine-making (i.e. responding to the quality of the fruit) mean that Barolo and Barbaresco can be drunk much earlier than it was in the past.
How uniform are vintages?
Some vintages can result in wines of very different qualities. One of the hallmarks of truly great winemakers is that they can often make great wine in really poor years. The aforementioned Giacomo Conterno produced one of its 100-point wines in 2002, a year when others did not bottle Barolo at all. The better a winery, the more it is prepared to sacrifice volume for quality. Rigid reduction of yields in poor, cool years, meticulous selection, knowledge about how to get the best out of the grapes and patience can all produce small quantities of exceptional wine. By contrast, the characteristic of truly great years is that everyone, at whatever level, can do well. If you couldn’t make good to great wine in the near-perfect 2016, you probably ought to be thinking about your career choices.
Variation in quality really shows in challenging vintages such as 2017 which was hot and very dry. The best succeeded but others made wines that had cooked-fruit notes and challenging tannins. This variation makes assessing the state of evolution of the wine difficult.
Primary fruit or aged characteristics?
Personal taste is perhaps the most divisive issue of all. Do you prefer wines that mainly show primary fruit or those with marked aged characteristics? In terms of Nebbiolo, this means the balance between the pure violet/sour red cherry/red to black plum flavours of young wines and the ethereal combination of earth/developed fruit/volatile acidity/truffle of fully developed wines. The wines in question are those intended for medium to long-term ageing. These should develop additional tertiary characteristics. Otherwise, there would be no reason to review the last 20 vintages. But that doesn’t mean that you should prefer older wines; that’s a personal choice.
For most ageable red wines, whether Nebbiolo or other varieties, my preference is for wines in the window between 10–25 years. In that window they show tertiary characteristics but with the primary fruit still dominant. But that is merely a personal choice. Others regard 15 years of age as the bare minimum for top Barolo and Barbaresco. I know that great wines can evolve to show an extraordinary youthful red fruit character emerging from the tertiary elements. Borgogno’s Barolo Riserva 1982, which I tasted in November 2023, just into its fifth decade, did just that. An earlier tasting of one Barolo Riserva from each of the decades back to the 1930s proved that Barolo can age magnificently. If it is Nebbiolo and a great example, I shouldn’t take the ‘drink up’ advice too literally!
In sum, it is possible to make general judgements each year about the quality of a vintage and the state of development of the wines of Barolo and Barbaresco. There are enough commonalities to generalise, even if there will always be caveats and exceptions. The two main caveats are terroir differences within Barolo and winemaker intention. However, no one can tell you when you will most enjoy your wines, depending if you are in the youthful, the youthful with tertiary notes or the fully developed camp. In my next posts, I will comment on the wines I tasted in November 2023 at Produttori del Barbaresco, Gaja, G.D. Vajra, Ceretto, Sordo, Borgogno, and Fontanafredda.
