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italy

Sölva for V

Sölva 2010 Vernatsch (Alto Adige) – Anyone who’s taken one of the various flavors of formal wine education has spent some time studying color and the tales it tells…about variety, site, age, winemaking, alcohol level, and certain faults. In this age of orange wines (very few of which are actually “orange” as such) and cloudy, browned-out natural whites, the former lexicon is a bit tattered, but the generalizations still more or less hold. Personally, I no longer find the color of a wine of anything more than academic interest, which is why I almost never mention it; if I’m analyzing or guessing, it’s important, but I tend to think that people who find the color of their wine crucial (rather than just nice to look at) are kind of missing the point.

So I wonder what anyone – analyst or drinker – would make of the optics here. As pale as many a Jura red (paler, perhaps), tending towards early autumnals like a Piedmontese nebbiolo, but also including the more cosmetic blushes of a grignolino. I can’t quite decide if it’s beautiful or necrotic.

But how does it taste, Mr. I-Don’t-Care-About-Visuals? I return to the subject of grignolino, in its combination of sharp, somewhat gritty fruit with the velvety softening of minor (but not flaw-level) oxidation. It’s a little more purple-berried than that, and there’s a keening acidity that speaks of chilly nights and early winters. It’s a fascinating wine (to my memory, my first vernatsch), frankly, and I need to own more of it. (3/12)

Nere a doubt

Terre Nere 2010 Etna Rosso (Sicily) – Surprisingly lavish, like a fine-grained cloud of minerality and dried morels, but much more forward and overtly floral than I’d expected, with structure but even more non-structural appeal. I don’t think a little age is going to hurt, but if it’s this consistently appealing in its youth, this vintage is going to be hard to hold on to. (2/12)

Before the meeting

Institut Agricole Régional 2007 Premetta (Vallée d’Aoste) – Like drinking a mille-feuille, its dark-fruited minerality dense yet separable; one experiences this wine as a series of fine layers, each yielding to a moment of space before and after. (2/12)

Library

Alessandria 2004 Barolo Monvigliero (Piedmont) – Let me preface this note by saying that at the time I drink this wine, I’m in the early stages of what will eventually be a three-week misery of sickness, the worst I’ve experience since I was swaddled. So there’s every reason to suspect that my palate is not 100%, or at least of which 100% it might be capable. I mention this because I struggle to find aromatic interest in this wine, which is never a welcome absence in a nebbiolo. The structure, while certainly dominant, isn’t as forbidding as it could be. And there’s a lot of density to the wine. But other qualities…I’m just not seeing them. (11/11)

Colline taxi

Le Piane 2004 Colline Novaresi “La Maggiorina” (Piedmont) – An aging experiment. At release, the “red riesling” aspect of the wine – mineral, linear, precise, and chilly – was very evident, but since then bottles have been tentative at best, providing only icy structure without much else. Since I’ve no experience aging this wine, there was no way to know if this was a closed period or just the wine’s slow descent into rigor mortis.

Well, this bottle provides a measure of hope, though of course I still don’t know how matters will develop from here. The fruit is back, darker and more developed than it was, though there’s still a strong sensation of restraint, or even diffidence. The structure is no less chilly. It’s far from an expressive wine, but with careful listening there’s a quiet story being told. (1/12)

Well, they otto done a lot of things

Dettori “Badde Nigolosu” 2008 Romagnia Rosso “Ottomarzo” (Sardinia) – The walloping stank of immense volatile acidity…and not much else. VA is my “thing,” yes, but I can’t get past it here. This wine is grossly, impenetrably flawed. I appreciate the prose middle finger to convention and marketability on the back label, in which they insist on their right to produce wines like this, but while I like many Dettori wines a great deal and have absolutely adored some as works of near-genius, this is not one of them. This is horrible. (11/11)

Contini on

Contini 1998 Vernaccia di Oristano “Riserva” (Sardinia) – Like drinking preservation. Not any specific method of, but preservation itself. This sense of unsatisfied temporal tension awaiting content is almost specific to vernaccia di Oristano, for my palate, and sets it apart from so many other flor wines with much more self-generated qualities. Vernaccia di Oristano always seems like it’s expecting something that hasn’t yet happened. (11/11)

Balificocean

Stianti “Volpaia” 1998 Balifico (Tuscany) – Suavely-oaked herbs, oak-sheened dark fruit (its identity anonymous), a vague gesture in the direction of structure. Bordeaux-ish yet not. Some tar at the end. Has matured nicely yet to no particular destination of more than academic interest. Yep…this is a super-Tuscan, alright. (1/12)

For richer or Porer

Lageder 2004 Pinot Grigio Benefizium Porer (Alto Adige) – An aging experiment gone…well not awry, exactly. There have been developments. But the creamier texture, the roundness, and the extra weight are all in the service of a much less interesting wine than this was in its youth. That precision has dulled is no surprise, but despite what appears at first glance to be added concentration is in fact no more than dilution-masking mass. In a way, it takes more like pinot gris than it did before. But it tastes less of the Alto Adige. I’m perfectly willing to believe there’s ageable pinot grigio from this region (pinot gris can age just fine from Alsace, dry or sweet, as long as it retains sufficient acidity), but as I’d have bet on this being one of them, maybe I’m looking for the wrong things. (1/12)

Space Oddero

Oddero 1998 Barolo (Piedmont) – I admit to struggling with this wine, never quite sure if it’s corked (if so, it’s sub-my-threshold) or just being a typically antisocial mid-life Barolo. The only thing of sure of is that, based on numbers and history rather than organoleptics, this is probably a suboptimal age to be drinking a traditionally-styled Barolo. It is not, in any sense, giving of itself, except with clouds of obscurative tannin and an angry snarl. Structurally and temporally, all seems to be right with the wine, and my worries about taint are not shared by anyone else who tastes it. So if this bottle is representative, this is no time to be drinking it. If it’s not, then I just don’t know. And there’s always the possibility that the current problem is the taster and not the wine. (11/11)