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)

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)

Sweatin' to the Rainoldis

Rainoldi 2002 Valtellina “Superiore” Sassella “Riserva” (Lombardy) – Buttered toast with a slight char. Red fruit that’s been sitting in the sun too long, with a nice bite of amaro and barely-restrained aggression, but why does it taste like nasty old oak diluted with brackish water? Barely drinkable. (2/09)

Albareda after dinner

Mamete Prevostini “Albareda” 2003 Sforzato di Valtellina (Lombardy) – Big blueberry and blackberry. Fruity and showing surprising signs of freshness. Powerful, spicy, and a little bit hot, with a long finish. In its idiom, it’s actually somewhat balanced. Not for the faint of palate, though. (2/07)