Italiano
The winegrowers are always right
One of the great things about working with Daniele Cernilli is that it can offer some extraordinary opportunities. Recently I had the possibility of tasting around 40 Barolo 2006 that were divided between reserves, cru and what not as well as some Barbaresco from the same year. The tasting was both wonderful and fun. Wonderful because the average quality of the wines was very high and fun because when I was young I was lucky to have encountered the great masters of Nebbiolo and learned from them how they evaluated vintages and wines using parameters that are still valid today, despite the technological advances that have been made in winery and, above all, in the vineyard.
Vintage 2006 was a controversial one that saw wine critics, especially the foreign ones, pitted against producers. The former maintained that the tannins that year were too hard and the wines introverted. They claimed that this was due to the extreme heat during the summer which, in their view, compromised the development of the polyphenols and meant that the wines would never find their proper balance. The latter, on the other hand, maintained that the wines needed time.
I am glad to report that the critics were wrong and happy to say that 2006 Barolo, not all but most of them, evolved magnificently just as producers predicted they would. I am also pleased that I was right to heed to their position and to have bought some of that vintage at the time. It is always best to listen to the opinions of winegrowers even if for them every year is a good one as can be seen by the price of the grapes. If the grapes after harvest have a high price then it is rare that the wine will be poor, unless there were catastrophic weather events after which the price of grapes is also high even if the quality of the wine will be below par.
After these considerations let’s take a look at the Barolo 2006. After ten years the tannins have been fully integrated into the wine giving its flavor a rewarding progression, while the aromatic profile has achieved an excellent balance between its fruity and floral components and the incipient notes of complexity from aging, with scents veering towards those of medicinal herbs and vaguely balsamic and licorice notes. The following are reviews of the four wines I found to be the most interesting.
