1989 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco Riserva Rabajà

Community Tasting Notes (17) Avg Score: 93.7 points

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  6/5/2023 - Oberunter-5 Likes this wine: 87 Points

  Enjoyable, but the bottle I had was past its peak—
  
  This wine has a lot of structure still. And that structure may outlive the fruit—at least that was my impression.
  
  The nose showed sweet cherry and roses with some coaxing—also fresh soil and mushrooms. It improved with air, but seemed to plateau after a few hours, settling with a not-quite-identifiable floral sweetness.
  
  The tannic base seemed to control the palate. Again, there’s some cherry around the edges, but not enough to balance the tannin.

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  4/8/2023 - kenv Likes this wine: 96 Points

  [Decanted around 6pm. Notes taken around 9pm.] Opened as a birth year wine for Eli whose birthday is next week. A bit tight and tannic at first, but the perfume is fabulous and the tannins fade with dry-aged ribeyes. Gorgeous nose of cherries, plums, tar, roses, and licorice. In the mouth there's an expansive richness and complexity. This is, for me, the epitome of Rabajà.

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  11/15/2019 - Robmcl920 Likes this wine: 92 Points

  The '89 Rabaja was an enjoyable wine, but fell short of what I would expect given the pedigree of the vineyard and vintage. There were dark red fruits and earth on the nose, while on the palate I got red fruit, licorice, and black truffle / earthy flavors. The tannins and structure remained a bit firmer than the '90 Rabaja that this was tasted alongside.
  
  Compared to the '90 Rabaja, the '89 was more red fruit than black fruit, and instead of 'darker' secondary aromas like espresso and balsamic, in this case there was truffle/earth aromas behind the fruit.
  
  Given the pedigree of the wine and the tannin/structure of this compared to the '90, I'm tempted to say it just needs more time, but I didn't get the sense there is enough stuffing there in terms of the fruit/flavor profile to assume that this will get better in the future.

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  4/18/2019 - kenv wrote: flawed

  Neb Vinous Blind 1989 Barolo & Barbaresco Dinner (Buona Notte, NYC): [Double decanted around 10am.] Mulchy nose. Tannic with restrained dried red fruit. Juicy, tarry red fruit. 89 points, but I don't think this is a sound bottle.

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  4/18/2019 - Eric Guido wrote: 87 Points

  1989 Barolo Retrospective - Single Blind (Buona Notte, NYC): Not the start to our ‘89 Barolo and Barbaresco vertical that we were hoping for; unfortunately the ‘89 Rabaja has seen better days, and as much as I’d like to hope it was just the bottle, the only thing that seemed to really be wrong was that the wine was on the decline. Here I found a display of dark moist soil tones, animal muskiness, minerals, and black cherry with a hint of decay. On the palate, soft textures gave way to black cherry fruits and earthy minerals, as an odd herbal tone developed, along with hints of old barrel. The finish was long with staining red fruit, rusty minerality and earth.

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