Community Tasting Notes 16

• Lord of the Bottles Likes this wine:

  February 29, 2024 - Vinous Italy Icons with Eric Guido (Feb 2024, NYC): Incredibly closed but you can sense the potential. Score withheld.

  2 people found this helpful Comment

• JJYoyo Likes this wine: 94 points

  February 11, 2024 - It took 3 days for this to come together. Initially tasted after a 3 hr decant and this was an awkward, sharp-elbowed mix of fierce tannin, bold red berries, garden shop florals and searing acidity. A day after leaving it in an evacuated bottle produced some integration but still too much tannin to balance the other components. On the third day this finally came together magnificently, still very structured but now the ingredients were not competing: violets, orange, light spice, a touch of gaminess.
  Honestly on the basis of my bottle I would leave this for at least another decade. It could be stellar.
  Score: 94+. Relative to expectations: ++ at least.

  2 people found this helpful Comment

• Robmcl920 Likes this wine: 96 points

  December 23, 2023 - The '10 Gavarini is the best wine I've tasted from Elio Grasso. It is just entering the early part of what should be a long drinking window - today, the aromatics are beautiful and the palate shows incredible finesse, but I still found it a bit ungiving on the palate. This bottle was double decanted in the afternoon and drank over a few hours at dinner.
  
  The nose was intensely perfumed and it's immediately clear that this is a special wine. The aromatics are incredibly sweet with hard candy like red berry fruits and fresh red roses bursting from the glass, along with fresh mint, blood orange peel, and spice aromas. The aromatic intensity of the wine, especially later in the evening, combined with the sweetness and the delineation of the red fruit and floral tone is incredible.
  
  On the palate, the Gavarini was medium in body and super finessed, with minimal perception of tannin. I found the wine quite a bit stricter on the palate than the nose suggested, but again the sweetness of the fruit and floral tones stands out, with red berry fruit, red roses, mint, and licorice flowing across the palate.
  
  Compared to other vintages of Gavarini, the '10 stands out for the purity of its flavor profile and the inner sweetness - the fruit and floral tones here are so distinct and sweet, which I also get in the best vintages like '16 and '19, but the '10 seems on another level. The tannins here seem to melt into the wine, whereas in a recent vintage like '19, I found a more classic and strict tannic structure. Obviously there's a 9 year age gap there, but the gap in tannin quality strikes me as wider than that age gap.

  4 people found this helpful Comment

• NostraBacchus Likes this wine: 97 points

  April 28, 2023 - Medium ruby color, just a hint of bricking towards the rim. First slightly holding back, but opening up with a little bit of swirling in the glass. This is still young, but showing beautiful complexity already with notes of red currant, sweet red cherries, some flowery notes of dried rose petals and violets, mint, some herbal notes, there is also a nice mineral vein of graphite and a touch of tar, truffle, also some underwood while it‘s opening up. Constantly changing in the glass, buildling up layer over layer of aromatic complexity. It‘s medium-full bodied, with great persistence, it‘s showing depth without weight, has medium-high tannin that is super silky and pretty high acidity adding to the overall impression of freshness. Long towering finish.
  Wow, this putting on weight with more air and adding so much complexity. A breath-taking Barolo and not crazy to open a bottle now if you have a few. (97+)

  5 people found this helpful Comments (1)

• bablues wrote: 95 points

  December 24, 2022 - I bought a couple of these on release, and have been anticipating for a while. Twelve years seems like a good time to pop one and Christmas Eve crab gravy seemed like the perfect pair. And it was. Color was a beautiful orange/brown and the nose was roses and a hint a mint. Very dry at first and then calmed down to a wonderful balance of silk and power.

  3 people found this helpful Comment

Pro Reviews 4

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2010
• Type Red
• Producer Elio Grasso
• Varietal Nebbiolo
• Designation n/a
• Vineyard Gavarini Chiniera
• Country Italy
• Region Piedmont
• SubRegion Langhe
• Appellation Barolo
• UPC Code 088534001687

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 112 (5%)
• In Cellars 1,703 (72%)
• Consumed 550 (23%)

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