A tip of the Capp

Cappellano 1961 Barolo (Piedmont) – Some things transcend description not because of their inherent qualities but because of their unlikely reality. So it is with old wines. I mean, I love describing them – the longest note I’ve ever written was about a Vouvray of about this age – but when one has been lucky enough to have a fair number of such artifacts, the purpose of extensive notation becomes less clear. Because, really, how meaningful is the description? There’s almost none of this wine left, what’s left is incredibly expensive, and even if a bottle can be secured the likelihood of this bottle and another having much in common grows lower each year. So here, there’s a fragile, incredibly delicate wine of sweet berries and almost no remaining structure, and while that fragility shouldn’t be mistaken for decrepitude (it’s extremely intact, supple, and present), it’s certainly not going anywhere else worth waiting for. It’s a beautiful, beautiful old wine, with its diminishing bottle count reduced by one, but I enjoyed drinking it more than I’ve enjoyed writing about it. (8/11)