1996 Renato Ratti Barolo Rocche

Community Tasting Notes (2) Avg Score: 87 points

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  2/12/2015 - forceberry wrote: 84 Points

  If I've understood correctly, this Barolo is now known as Rocche dell'Annunziata. Macerated for 7-10 days, aged for 2 years in barriques and large Slavonian oak casks of 2500 liters.
  
  Moderately translucent dark cherry. Somewhat aged and a bit tired nose with aromas of dark cherries, alcohol, some truffle, a little bit of musty earthiness and a hint of dusty old furniture. Some people though the wine might be suffering from a very mild case of TCA, but in the end we decided that maybe the wine just wasn't up to par. The wine is soft and full-bodied on the palate with somewhat sweet flavors of ripe cherries, red-toned fruit, some cherry marmalade and a hint of earth. Body-wise the wine feels like it is missing its middle a bit, coming across slightly hollow. The acidity is rather mellow and the tannins have rounded out pretty much. The finish is rather sweet and soft with flavors of very ripe black cherries, some oaky chocolate tones, a little bit of sour cherry bitterness and a slightest hint of musty earthiness.
  
  A very soft and mellow Barolo that feels like it wasn't really showing up how it should. Some suspected it was suffering from a slightest touch of TCA, some suspected poor storage, some doubted whether the wine was just living beyond its years and falling apart. While I thought it was not showing its best and it really should've performed better at "only" 18 years of age", I seriously doubted the TCA part - the wine was just too fruity and expressive to be corked. There were some musty notes, but not really similar to the cellar aromas of TCA. Because we couldn't agree on whether the wine was sound or not, I'm going to give the wine a score, but with the caveat that perhaps another bottle would've performed better. It was still a nice Barolo, but really underwhelming compared to the older Renato Ratti Marcenascos we had after this.

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  1/24/2010 - Happybob wrote: 90 Points

  Nice balanced Barolo - opens in ~1.5 hrs to a nicely integrated, good med-dark berry fruit wine that finds itself halfway between the old vs new styles.

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