Cascina Roera Vino da Tavola “La Rovere” (Piedmont) – Lot LR1, but I can locate no other indication – no matter how secretive, and VdT producers usually find some way to provide this information – of vintage. This is barbera, and I don’t just mean that it’s made from barbera, I mean it is barbera: sharp, violently red, yet precise rather than overwhelming. There’s a dusty minerality that may be about half dark evergreen herbality, but whichever it is it adds great character without dragging the wine into more serious realms than it is willing to enter. Really fabulous for its very simplicity, and the lack of striving for anything other than purity of expression is incredibly welcome. (7/11)
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roera
Pierre
Cascina Roera 2004 Barbera d’Asti Cardin (Piedmont) – The first barbera I’ve been able to convince myself to drink since tasting zillions of them in the Piedmont, and just about the only reason I’m able to do so is the importer (Adonna), whose wines don’t traffic in the misplaced ambition and sloppy internationalization that plagued so very many in that tasting. This is one of the pushed-fruit examples – not traditional and crisp, but not sloppily internationalized either – and handles both that fruit and a listed 15% alcohol (I wouldn’t be surprised were the actual number a bit higher) very well, with dark-berry fruit dominating the lighter, redder elements, but still keeping that fruit firmly in the realm of berries rather than something more luxuriant. There’s a bit of soil, some pepper, even some nearly licorice-like concentration that does put me in mind of similar genre-straddling wines in Valpolicella. It’s very good. Not cheap, but doing its best to live up to its price without extravagance, and there’s every indication that it might age for a little while. (8/10)