All you had to say was "Nebbiolo" and I was there like the hummingbird who perches on a shrub by the kitchen window, waiting for us to refill the empty feeder.
"People are looking for more elegant wines. Not so much the dense, dark style of before.” So basically they're looking for what I think of as the norm. "Before" in this quote really means the style of a relatively short interlude. Okay, maybe a generation. Langhe Nebbiolos - regardless of appellation - from the 70s were stylistically not that different from what I'm drinking now, albeit generally with less reliable ripeness and much spottier winemaking.
True confessions, I don't have a big wine budget, and thus am under-exposed to the very top bottles. I certainly wasn't drinking Gaja and its ilk through the "big wine" 90s, so I admit to painting with a pretty broad brush. (I do recall, with fondness, opening some Gaja bottling in the late '80s, at the store, when I was still working in wine. My boss rolled his eyes with impatience and quipped that Angelo Gaja wanted there to be no doubt that he had the longest cork in the business.)
Anyway, the little treasures I do manage to score are just as pale and dirt-textured and slow to blossom as ever, and thank God for that. My current honey is the 2019 Barolo "Rocchettevino" from the "other" Viberti, Eraldo. I'm just sitting here in my shrub, biding time until I can conjure an excuse to open another of the last few.
Congrats on the WSJ publication, although I'm not sure they deserve you. Shoot for the New Yorker next time, huh? They need some wine journalism.
As always, your artikel is spot on! I collected Barolo’s (as a Dutch Guy) in the past to keep them for 8 years! When I finaly drank them, I was so disappointed: they turned out sweet (what I hate). The tannines were gone and the acids were not enough to compensate. I only age whites these day’s (you should write an article about this subject). And indeed if you taste a lot of wine in your live you start to prefer, ligther and more elegant Wines: for me Barberesco is King!
Congrats on the publication! Great selections, too. Its funny, but I feel that for just about any difficult pairing, Italy "has a wine for that".
Yes! Thank you!
All you had to say was "Nebbiolo" and I was there like the hummingbird who perches on a shrub by the kitchen window, waiting for us to refill the empty feeder.
"People are looking for more elegant wines. Not so much the dense, dark style of before.” So basically they're looking for what I think of as the norm. "Before" in this quote really means the style of a relatively short interlude. Okay, maybe a generation. Langhe Nebbiolos - regardless of appellation - from the 70s were stylistically not that different from what I'm drinking now, albeit generally with less reliable ripeness and much spottier winemaking.
True confessions, I don't have a big wine budget, and thus am under-exposed to the very top bottles. I certainly wasn't drinking Gaja and its ilk through the "big wine" 90s, so I admit to painting with a pretty broad brush. (I do recall, with fondness, opening some Gaja bottling in the late '80s, at the store, when I was still working in wine. My boss rolled his eyes with impatience and quipped that Angelo Gaja wanted there to be no doubt that he had the longest cork in the business.)
Anyway, the little treasures I do manage to score are just as pale and dirt-textured and slow to blossom as ever, and thank God for that. My current honey is the 2019 Barolo "Rocchettevino" from the "other" Viberti, Eraldo. I'm just sitting here in my shrub, biding time until I can conjure an excuse to open another of the last few.
Congrats on the WSJ publication, although I'm not sure they deserve you. Shoot for the New Yorker next time, huh? They need some wine journalism.
As always, your artikel is spot on! I collected Barolo’s (as a Dutch Guy) in the past to keep them for 8 years! When I finaly drank them, I was so disappointed: they turned out sweet (what I hate). The tannines were gone and the acids were not enough to compensate. I only age whites these day’s (you should write an article about this subject). And indeed if you taste a lot of wine in your live you start to prefer, ligther and more elegant Wines: for me Barberesco is King!
Thank you! Sara wrote a great piece about aging whites last week! https://www.everydaydrinking.com/p/in-praise-of-older-white-wines