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italy

Fontodi’s wild ride

[fontodi]Fontodi 1995 Chianti Classico Riserva (Tuscany) — Dust and strawberry charcoal with a sharply exposed spine of tannin. Probably a few years past peak, but the lingering aromatics are as soil-driven as one could ever want. (11/16)

Border Colli

[galea rosso]i Clivi 2000 Colli Orientali del Friuli Galea Rosso (Friuli-Venezia Giulia) — Keening, yearning fruit poised between supple lusciousness and Alpine brittleness. This is really good right now, though I don’t think there’s any hurry, either. (11/16)

Myrna Loi

[nùo]Loi “Nùo” 2013 Vermentino di Sardegna (Sardinia) — Skin contact, with all the leveling, asymptotic effects that portends. It’s still more refreshing than Dettori (isn’t everything? well, except Cornelissen), but it’s very heavy, and I’m not seeing the vermentino here. All that aside, I like it, in its lead-on-the-tongue sort of way. (11/16)

Dr. Galea

[galea]i Clivi 2002 Colli Orientali del Friuli Galea Bianco (Friuli-Venezia Giulia) — Memory engraved in amber and then preserved in wax. Like drinking patina, bee-etched, cool stone slopes reflected the last bronze of a sunset above a field of sleeping vines. (8/16)

i Clivi 1999 Colli Orientali del Friuli Galea Bianco (Friuli-Venezia Giulia) — At first, this was so aromatically mute I worried it was corked. But it wasn’t. It blossomed and burled all night, and by the time I took it home it was singing a full-throated song of lanolin and bone echoing off the spine of a distant mountain. (11/16)

Just one more thing…

[pieropan recioto]Pieropan 2007 Recioto di Soave Classico “Le Colombare” (Veneto) — Sweet cloudberries, crystalline minerality, finely honed acidity. A beautiful, beautiful dessert wine. Like drinking the palest most tranparent gold. (9/16)

Screamin’ Pajé Hawkins

[roagna pajé]Roagna 1999 Barbaresco Pajé (Piedmont) — This takes an half-hour or so to unwind, and then improves steadily for well over an hour; I’m sure it would have continued, but the recipients of such beauty were greedy consumers. Dried flowers, dried bark, faint woodsmoke upon a parched sunrise. Fullness with delicacy, hardness with yield. A lovely, lovely wine. (7/16)

Nebbish

[produttori]Produttori del Barbaresco 2012 Barbaresco (Piedmont) — Particularly…perhaps even unusually…approachable. Mostly crushed and dusted flower petals, with some soft earth. By general standards it seems beautifully in balance, which of course makes me wonder if it’s in nebbiolo-balance. In any case, it’s one that will be hard to not drink, because it’s so appealing right now. And finding nebbiolo that requires patience isn’t exactly difficult. (5/16)

Just one more thing…

G. Battista Columbu 2010 Malvasia di Bosa Riserva (Sardinia) — Outrageous texture, outrageous fog-blindness spice; like drinking a blizzard without the chill. Salty and pepper and full of citrus zest, this would be an overpowering wine…if it didn’t make me laugh out loud at the sheer joy of it. (5/16)