2010 Domenico Clerico Barolo Ciabot Mentin

Community Tasting Notes (29) Avg Score: 92.8 points

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  4/30/2024 - 560 B&W Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Tremendous. Barely ready. 14.5%

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  10/27/2023 - Rote Kappelle Likes this wine: 94 Points

  After a period of whoring about it was time to return to what seems to be my true love, Italian wine. And what does my true love give me as a fatted calf? A fine vintage, a great cru (Ginestra) within Monforte d'Alba and a maker regarded as one of the masters of Ginestra. Rum tum tum! Much twirling of moustaches, two handed stiffy gripping, rambling with the nuns in the convent and saying of 'Nyaw'!
  
  There are good notes on site for this wine, although they do span a rather wide divide in terms of aspects of this drink, especially viz tannins of destiny.
  
  The colour is the usual Barolo deceit - it looks prematurely aged, but they all do. There is considerable, almost terrifying depth of colour that seems to say to the drinker "Who's going to call you for the lame, dope smoking, slacking, little sucker you are?" Yes, folks, this wine will lay some truth on you.
  
  And, like Monster Magnet, it delivers. This is glorious from the moment one extracts the cork, angry though it is, spitting at you 'How dare you, you filthy little c*^t! We are not ready. Don't you get that, you Calvinist wanker? You have snatched us untimely from the womb.'
  
  Waves of potent dried cranberry, rose, plum and dark berry put you in the kind of lock that normally costs a lot of money at the places where women will consider me. There is also iron and dark polished timber.
  
  For God's sake don't succumb to this wine's first glimpse of cleavage. Decant and give 5-6 hours. Then go at the naughty parts like a bull at a gate.
  
  There is oak in this mix - Clerico was using barrique size oak for about 8 months in those days, but it is very well integrated and you will have to hunt for it. I really prefer Barolo sans new oak, but here it does not distract or irritate and I am irascible enough that oaky Barolo would make me murderous.
  
  Now to the tannins. My tractor palate is not terribly sensitive to these beasties, but this is a tannic wine. In the mouth the effect is thus - it is a typically fine day in Auckland in 1989. The rain is horizontal and it is possible to surf or raft on its volume. The wind is the usual light force 10 zephyr. Eden Park is full of the typical, open minded sporting fan. You, the drinker, are an Australian rugby player of middling build and capacities. During the haka you addressed the Wetton boys about their talent for acting as gimps for the most effete Bombay Hills types; you reminded Michael Jones that his cult was not even really Christian and you casually mentioned to that nice Mr. Shelford that it was a miracle the French could find a testicle to rip open; surely it was an ovary? These tannins roll over you like that reckless Aussie trapped on the wrong side of a ruck. And they do it for 80 minutes.
  
  The finish, like the hell of a match lost at Eden Park, is long, the intensity mirrors that of the All Blacks insulted. This is a beast. Yet, for all that, those rose and dried cranberry aspects give it a delicacy that is hard to describe, a beauty that reminds me of rugby at its best.
  
  The tannins, by the way are for the most part possessed of a sweetness in the bitter that may seem an odd thing to say but it is true, I think, of the tannins in well ripened fruit. There is some slightly coarse and bitter oak tannin as well and it reminds you why Barolo and new oak should not mix. It is a small matter, but it stops me giving this 95-96.
  
  This is a wine that will get better and better over the next 10-20 years, if the cork holds. A wonderful drink on the eve of the 2023 Rugby World Cup final. May the Darkness prevail over the real rugby darkness; a side that plays a strangled version of the game, replete with all the worst aspects of rugby and then some. I have no issue with set piece prowess and I love scrum, lineout, ruck and maul, but I have a real issue with match smarts pushed beyond the limit, mixed with abuse of referees on an industrial scale. Rugby for the Broederbond. No good should come of them.

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  3/18/2023 - americanstorm Likes this wine: 94 Points

  4 hour decant. Lovely nose of cherry, a touch of leather and tar. Tannins are fine and almost totally integrated. Red fruits, earth, leather and tar. Great mouthfeel and finish. Drinking very well and should have many years of good drinking. Really nice wine and my wotn.

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  3/16/2023 - up4wine wrote: flawed

  Corked.

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  11/23/2022 - markcic Likes this wine: 92 Points

  This wine needs airtime. At first it was very harsh but after an hour or so in the glass it really opened up. The nose was dark plum with hints of chocolate. The palate was dark cherry, plum, tobacco and a little chocolate. Once opened up the finish was moderate to long.

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