The end of a little story

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – The last bottle of what was a full-case purchase, and I don’t regret my decision to finish it off. It was, in the beginning, as much of a “stump the drunks” bit of tomfoolery as it was a purchase based on quality; I liked it well enough, but what I really loved was the idea of pouring a white wine for my expert friends and having them try to guess what it was, knowing that they would never arrive at “nebbiolo” as the answer. What does it taste like? I believe I've covered that. (10/11)

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)

Spelling

Produttori del Barbaresco 2006 Barbaresco (Piedmont) – L.10.155, for those keeping track. A really nice wine, with the dry structure and dried aromatics of a fine nebbiolo. It’s blendedness keeps it from expressing any particulars from its place, yet it does taste like a Barbaresco. (7/11)

Produttori del Barbaresco 2006 Barbaresco (Piedmont) – I don’t know that I’d often be moved to call any Bararesco not issuing from the house of Gaja or their brethren as “lush,” but there’s a certain lushness to the granulated flower petal aromatics of this wine that have always been part of its early appeal. That said, it’s less fleshy than it was at release, already retreating behind tannin that (again, in context) seemed a little smoother and more approachable than normal. It needs food right now, but very soon all it’s going to need is time. (9/11)

Triacca back

Triacca 2007 Valtellina Superiore Sassella (Lombardy) – Razor-slashed violets and carnivorous wild berries. Yet despite the implied violence, this is a fairly restrained Valtellina…tame, even…which has both good and bad sides. The good, of course, is that it’s much more approachable for the Valtellina-suspicious. The bad is that its cultists may find this not Valtellina-ish enough. Neither suspicious nor a cultist, I find the wine quite pleasant and very amenable to food. (8/11)

Nova

Bianco Aldo 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo (Piedmont) – Dark fruit, with tannin and some acidity in place, but also with a sticky, coffee-like residue that detracts. Awkward and generally insignificant. (7/11)

Sellabrate

Sella 2005 Lessona (Piedmont) – Completely unapproachable right now. The finish is long, there’s clearly-evident power, and the structure is intact, but there’s no way to get at anything more generous or interesting at the moment. (2/11)

Retichelous

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – Still chugging along, mostly along the lines of all the other notes I’ve posted so far, though perhaps a bit more angular than most. I’m choosing to see that as slight slippage, but it’s entirely possible that I’m convincing myself of that rather than letting the wine say it to me straight. (2/11)

Tori aimless

Produttori del Barbaresco 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo (Piedmont) – Corked. (2/11)

Nera far

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – I continue to plow through these at the fastest possible rate, given the eventually-certain failure of the closure. No changes evident in this bottle; see all previous notes and pretend I’ve retyped them. (12/10)

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – Some brighter shadings here, as if there’s lens flare on the fruit. Combine that with a little sharper acidity than is the norm, but otherwise status quo. (12/10)

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – Blossoming, by which I mean the floral element here is more prominent. And is that pineapple I taste? The emergent unpredictability of this wine is, unfortunately, predicted by its synthetic cork. (12/10)

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – On the other hand, here’s a cork that’s obviously held its seal, because this one tastes much like my earliest bottles: a range of crisp fruits in the apple and melon category, some grapefruit, a lot of white crystalline stuff encrusting the underbelly, with life and liveliness to spare. Pure fun, and this is why I bought a case. (12/10)

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – See previous note. (12/10)

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – The most dramatic fade yet, and what’s being left behind is mostly acidity. I’m down to two bottles, and I don’t see those surviving the month. (12/10)

Nera word

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – I’m trying to drink up what is rather a quantity of this, given the lurid neon white closure. Absent that abomination, I’d be aging this. Who wouldn’t age nebbiolo, even if it’s white and nearly unrecognizable? It might be a disaster, but the experiment would have been fun. Alas, not under plastic dildo. And so: a little more tropical in flavor while less tropical in form, if that makes sense. The wine, in other words, has faded just a touch. Maybe my imagination. In any case, it’s still crisp, aromatic, zippy, and appealing. (10/10)

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – The most nebbiolo-like bottle yet, by which I almost certainly mean that I am fooling myself into thinking so and would never even approach the word “nebbiolo” were it not on the label. But the aromatics are, with the benefit of knowledge, turning rose-ish. Otherwise, there’s the vibrant peach honey fruit and lively acidity. And yes, there’s just a little bit of fraying, for which I blame the closure rather than the wine. But it’s still quite good. (10/10)

Rainoldi on my parade

Rainoldi 2005 Valtellina Superiore Prugnolo (Lombardy) – Sapid and hexagonal, then spiraling into a gravitational tesseract of appealing oddity. Red fruit? Flowers? Gritty soil? Yeah, sure. And then again, not so much. There’s having a dialogue with your wine, and then listening to it deliver a Dadaist lecture. And you either like that kind of thing or you don’t. I do, sometimes…and this is one of those times. (8/10)

Little book

Nera “La Novella” 2008 Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio Chiavennasca Bianco (Lombardy) – Sweet fruit and pretty flowers. Tra-la-la, tra-la-la. Also, green apple, walnut skins, and puppy dog tails. Fresh’n’fruity. Not the most interesting bottle of this I’ve had. Too giggly. (5/10)

Grande

Le Piane 1984 Boca (Piedmont) – Clinging. Sharp acidity and dusty, brown, eroded roses with alpine minerality and thin shafts of bone sticking out everywhere. This was probably better a little while ago, but there’s still quite a bit of life to it. It’s just a creaky, arthritic life. (6/10)

Pora me

Produttori del Barbaresco 1996 Barbaresco Pora “Riserva” (Piedmont) – A recent purchase. Citrus, chalky tannins, gravel soup, and old woods harboring a memory of animal inhabitants long passed. (Not “old wood.” Old woods. Like an elderly forest.) A little worse for its wear. Intact bottles could be better, and if so perhaps not yet ready. (5/10)

Making a Liste, checking it twic

Damilano 2005 Barolo Liste (Piedmont) – Roses – a surplus of them – with absolutely brutal tannin. There’s fruit, too: red cherry and strawberry. Also, bark and a cheese rind texture (not the spoilage or refermentation aroma, just a texture). Probably balanced in its idiom, but the twenty or so years likely required to bring the tannin down to something manageable…I just don’t know. I doubt there’s the complexity or fruit persistence to sustain that sort of timeframe. I guess we’ll see. (3/10)

Tippe Cannubi (and Tyler too)

Damilano 2005 Barolo Brunate Cannubi (Piedmont) – Even more muscular than the Cannubi, with a wallop of angular tannin, but better-balanced. Yet again there’s some syrup marking the midpalate, after which it finishes hard. Steroidal, and then dressed in designer duds. Will this ever be drinkable? And why the sheen in the meantime? (3/10)

Cannubi any more annoying?

Damilano 2005 Barolo Cannubi (Piedmont) – Laughing roses and the expected mass of structural tannin. Underneath, however, there’s a swell of New Worldish concentration that pretties this wine up a little more than is good for it. The finish returns to the hard, hard road Barolo often travels. There’s a good wine in here somewhere, but I don’t think it’s been dealt with as well as it might have been. (3/10)

Am I the Castiglione one?

Oddero 2001 Barolo Rocche di Castiglione (Piedmont) – Already fairly mature in some ways, with its soil turned pepper-powdery and the fruit having yielded to well-dried black roses. Old tar, laid long ago with aspiration, through a long-fallow field permeates both the tar and the structure. The finish is soil-derived but powdery. Very approachable, and despite all expectations I’d consider drinking this nowish. (3/10)

The Marchenasco of the shreves

Ratti 2001 Barolo Marcenasco (Piedmont) – Light and dirty, with a lift to it despite the dark-fruited, brooding core. Crushed flowers everywhere. This is still developing, and while there are prematurely mature elements present, the wine itself is still reasonably firm and grippy, and will need another five-plus years (at the very least) to yield its full range of aromatic complexity. (3/10)

Jane Fonda in space

Produttori del Barbaresco 2005 Barbaresco (Piedmont) – Very tannic and brutish, with flailing acidity and a biting lash of tart red fruit. Powerful and concentrated in a way that’s perhaps not expected from this basic blend, with sour cherry mostarda taking control of the finish. Very, very young. (3/10)