2019 Vietti Barolo Rocche di Castiglione
Community Tasting Note
Robmcl920 Likes this wine:
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 - The '19 Rocche is a beautiful young wine in need of a long time in the cellar. While it is an excellent wine on its own merits, I found it a bit disappointing in the context of how great this bottling has been in past vintages, particularly the 2016. My sense is the 2019 version of this wine, perhaps like the vintage in general, needs more time than the 2016 to show its cards. Perhaps with time, the difference in apparent quality will be reduced or the tables will turn.
The nose of the '19 Rocche was nicely perfumed from first pour, with a beautiful bouquet of exotic tropical fruit, pure red raspberry fruits, sweet, fresh red roses, exotic spices, and menthol. Compared to the 2016 version of the wine, the 2019 is more red-fruited and also less complex, but what's there is definitely high quality.
On the palate, the '19 is also beautiful with a combination of nice sweetness of the red fruit tones and energy from the medium to high acidity level. Texturally, the Rocche is a bit lighter than I recall the '16 and has less of a sense of textural 'creaminess', while the tannins here seem less well integrated at this stage. That said, again, in an absolute sense, the tannin quality here is very high, especially in 2019 where I notice a lot of the wines being quite tannic. The Rocche did not show much complexity on the palate, with pure red berry fruit, fresh red roses, spices, and a hint of orange peel.
Bottle was tasted immediately after opening and ~2 hours after opening. I will update the TN if later with additional air there is noticeable development. Bottle was purchased directly from the winery.
Update (~8 hours after opening): For the most part, I found the '19 Rocche to show similarly with air, but the aromatics are popping a bit more. As before, what stands out what this wine is more the quality of what is there rather than the complexity, at least for now. The fruit and floral tones are sweet and a bit exotic. On the palate, the wine has a lot of intensity and also shows good sweetness of fruit, but isn't that complex at this stage, and is finessed but not quite to the degree of the '16.
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