Community Tasting Note
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Fractalage Likes this wine:
February 15, 2020 - Had Vina Enoteca open this in 5 hours in advance of meal.
Perfect cork - ahso opened from Rocco.
Gorgeous clear red orange with a touch of brown
Nose of tart prunes with dusty cutrus. Smelled rich at first then went flabby. It should knit back together. There's a caramel note too.
Big energy on the palate. Perfect acidity with prunes and dried apricots and dusty cutrus with a caramel note on the finish.
Energy fades quickly tho. But amazing.
Coco dust, cigar and a spicey cake starts to show.
New pour
Opening fast!
Lots of caramel plums nose.
Palate is denser and more full and round. Great balance.
6:11pm
Bigger fuller nose slightly metallic, smoke, cigar, with a dried cherry dust and blackberry touches. There's orange rind and very subtle spices
Palate is full! Not flabby at all. Bigger dense. Balanced. Amazing juice.
Lots of flowers with spices and aromatics of elegant baking with a sharp crisp tannin that lingers and burns off the spices with a rather large herbal of baking herbs displayed.
What I really love about this is the dense rich spices. Just an amazing unique taste typical good Barolo.
There's some great anise lurking in there. But love that tart and the herbal finish
That herbal concentration keeps getting stronger.
I lament that I can't keep till tomorrow, as it's a restaurant pour. Vina Enoteca - best Italian on the Peninsula - let this bottle rest upright for 6 months. Thanks Rocco.1 person found this helpful 1,993 views
2 Comments
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sivarw commented:
7/31/21, 10:14 AM - Great TN. Could you elaborate on the 6 months upright comment?
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Fractalage commented:
8/2/21, 4:04 PM - Hi, sure, I had this bottle upright, meaning not laid down on its side. This was to assure full settling of sediment.
Make sense?
Probably didn't need a full 6 months, but I won't know because I just let it sit in Vina Enoteca: I did not monitor it.
Wines should never be opened when cloudy. Why bottle age if opened before sediment settles.
This is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine, as at the wine stores the vendors love to man handle the bottles. I figure it's their only excitement of the day to twirl a bottle or two. But holy hell! Please don't do that with my bottle. Just a few days ago that happened at an place I won't mention, because I love them, but without saying a word I put that shaken bottle back and took the one that was behind it.
The worst is at a fancy restaurant with no real somm and they don’t decant the bottle with a light.
Anyone who has tasted side by side both a rested versus a shaken bottle will immediately recognize the difference.
Always shine a powerful LED light through the bottle before opening. If it looks cloudy, don’t open it. Most bottles that have been transported need to rest at least a week before opening. The older the bottle the more time to rest upright needed. The LED will tell you when it’s ready.
Always decant.
Use that same powerful LED to shine through the bottle to let you know when the sediment starts to pour, then stop.
I always drink the sediment, but separately. Most times that last glass can settle out overnight and give to me a slow ox idea of how that bottle will further age.
Really young wines might not have much sediment, and those wines that were aged in tank or botti for extended time, such as Baroli, already had most of those larger molecules fall out, so they might be the clearest red wines you find. I’ve opened 25 year Barolo that barely had any sediment.
Cheap wines are very well filtered so they may never have much sediment.
Was this TMI?