2002 Giacomo Conterno Barolo Riserva Monfortino

Community Tasting Notes (80) Avg Score: 95.8 points

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  3/29/2024 - Burgnick Likes this wine: 97 Points

  Decanted to serve. The nose was complex with darkish red fruit, balsamic, grilled meat, smoke, tar, and rose petal. The palate was so deep and complex with layers of sensations that resembled the nose. This is as good as what a young Monfortino can get.

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  2/2/2024 - acyso wrote: 98 Points

  Friday (Chicago, IL): Yeah, that's the stuff. It's kind of mind-boggling how this is the only 2002 Piedmont wine I've ever had, but of course we all know the story at this point. Given the choice between pop and pour and overdecanting, I opted for the former, so we just followed this bottle for a good number of hours over the course of the evening. And while it was fine at the beginning, it certainly blossomed at the end. Expressive and effusive red fruit here; so clean and delicate, and with this ridiculously silky texture. Air gave this far more depth and some leathery notes also emerged. But this is a stunningly polished and precise, albeit fully traditionalist example of nebbiolo.

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  2/2/2024 - Robmcl920 Likes this wine: 98 Points

  Vinous Monfortino Dinner with Roberto Conterno; 2/1/2024-2/2/2024 (Legacy Records, NYC): This was an incredible bottle of the '02 and a miraculous wine given the vintage. I found this bottle to be on the more fruit-forward end of the bottles of '02 I have had. I found dark red cherry fruit, iron, red floral tones, and orange peel, with a beautiful sweetness to the fruit and floral tones, and the orange peel note adding freshness and a bit of exoticism to the aromatics. On the palate, the '02 was maybe the most dense wine of the evening in my opinion. It was a bit more savory to me on the palate than the nose, with dark red fruit, orange peel, smoke, and meat notes, with very high acidity and incredible sweetness. There is a lot of tannin here, but it appears to be on its way to integrating well, and the wine is so dense as to cover up the tannins. The tannin profile is a bit more rustic here than the recent vintages, but with time it will not matter.

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  1/21/2024 - gilrbo Likes this wine:

  Barolo vs Burgundy at about 20 years: Opened about four hours before the tasting. Retasted the evening after.
  The nose showed quite some exotic, spicy aromas, on top of the classic nebbiolo ones. Some fellow tasters mentioned vanilla, which I didn't get on the tasting, but perceived very clearly the evening after. We had quite some discussion whether this could have come from new wood, which I could not believe. Anyway, the palate was beautiful, rich, with a lot of substance, but very well balanced, and with the structure and power you expect from Serralunga and Monfortino in particular. Didn't show any sign of fading even on the second evening, and has the potential to develop even further.

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  11/9/2023 - Jamieson12o Likes this wine: 96 Points

  BBR Piedmont deep dive (BBR): 8 yrs in botti. Decanted 4hrs. Amazingly dark ruby. So intense on the nose; geranium leaf, roses, tar. Tannins are still really present; almost stringy. Incredible intensity/vivacity. Can't believe that this is 21 years old.

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