From magnum; 2018 disgorgement. Very large-scaled, juicy, and ripe. This seems very primary, and there are still some notes of sweet white grape on the palate that are clearly indicative of this wine's youth. Very easy drinking and not too complex at this stage, this is just straight-up very pleasant drinking now.

This bottle at first started off extremely acid-driven, and all the other stuff that this wine is all about wasn't apparent at all. In fact, it felt shrill from the heightened acidity and at the same time lost a lot of its complexity. This was much better about six hours later; more of the biscuity elements emerged, and the wine had a much fuller palate presence. Could it be that this is starting to shut down?

This bottle feels anomalous in the context of my prior experiences with this wine. Today, this was thin and high acid initially, with some tart apple and some brioche flavours; certainly it didn't seem like there was too much of interest here (apart from some nascent secondary characteristics). We revisited this at the end of dinner; it did not drastically improve and maybe even seemed to deteriorate a little with so much air. It's difficult to reconcile this with my recent prior experience a few months ago. Sure would be nice to be able to revisit this to confirm one way or another...

One of the better champagnes tonight. This is very clearly chardonnay with plenty of white fruit on the nose and palate. The fruit on the nose seems more acidic and less ripe; the fruit expression on the palate is riper and sweeter. A nice vein of acidity provides structure here. Compared to that other great 2007 champagne, the Comtes de Champagne, this is a little more rounded and sweeter. Both are outstanding and probably among the wines of the champagne vintage.

419035. Why don't I buy this more regularly? To put this incredibly stupidly, this tastes exactly the way a champagne would taste if it were a rosé made by Krug. The red fruit today seems more pronounced, and the tartness somewhat evokes cranberries. It's the same sort of tart red fruit on the palate, but of course there is the breadth and weight that only Krug has. Needless to say a little more on the oxidative style, but so fresh and delicious.

The pop and pour here was a disservice to this wine; it was weedy, thin, and unpleasant when we first tasted it. About five hours later, with maybe a third of the bottle remaining in a decanter, we revisited it and found it had shed most of the unpleasant stinky notes at first, and there was even a sweetness to the fruit here alongside some of the more classic floral perfume that emerged. The colour also appeared to have darkened. The overall arc here was not dissimilar to the 1968. Decant your old nebbiolos, boys and girls.

On the pop and pour, this was weedy, thin, and stinky. Wholly unimpressive, I was concerned I'd need to open a backup bottle. I decanted this for a few hours and it had drastically changed, leaving the room where I had left the decanter filled with a lovely floral perfume with just a hint of balsamic. On the palate, this showed plenty of fruit and sweetness with surprising potency, even at this age. The air/time allowed the wine to lose most of the stinky elements; by service, this was clean as a whistle.

Corked.

I found this quite enjoyable, especially since I am not a big fan of the Marcarini wines (they always seem really muddied to me). This bottle however, was not that. It was lifted and showed a more perfumed, racier side of nebbiolo in contrast to the 1968 G Conterno alongside. More lithe, more elegance, with some very bright acidity throughout. Lovely.

Surprisingly porty and ripe, with an almost pruney sweetness here. At the same time, this is very much alive for a wine of this age; the fruit, while desiccated is still going strong and provides weight for the palate. I would have liked to see more complexity on the palate, but this is pretty impressive nonetheless.

Slightly maderized, though initially this was still drinkable, if not particularly enjoyable. This bottle completely fell apart and became fully oxidized by the end of dinner.

This bottle lived up to its promise, unlike my previous experience with it. In fact, it got better with air and was the best at the end of the evening. This was fully mature, with a robe of dark fruit and just a hint of volatility on the nose that added to its allure. The fruit is ripe and full-bodied, but still fresh. Tannins are on the verge of full resolution; there's a lot of them here, but most of them have turned velvety.

Very primary. This doesn't show its age at all, and apart from the tannins starting to lose any remaining rough edges, I would never have guessed a wine of this age. The fruit is quite dark in profile (especially next to the 2000) and there is good intensity there. The tannins provide a somewhat thick texture to this wine. I could see this evolving into something like the 1989.

I also wouldn't have guessed the vintage on this if this were served to me blind. The fruit is very light and red-tinted, and the overall texture on the palate is more lifted and elegant than what I would have expected for a 2000. That said, this is amply delicious and is quite accessible right now, even if it is less complex on the palate.

Decanted around 8:30am. A big part of this wine's appeal is emotional. It's a bottle that tastes exactly as I envisioned it to be; it is precisely all of it. An extremely elegant perfume that is all the clichéd notes you would expect in Barolo; in fact, you might go as far as to say that the nose on this is archetypal. But the most impressive part of this wine is the texture. There are no rough edges; just a very pure, precise expression of nebbiolo ensconced in velvet. Put a notch in the bedpost for this one.

This suffered from being next to the absolutely brilliant bottle of 2002, despite being a phenomenal wine in its own right. The fruit profile is darker and more brooding than its more cheerful younger sibling. Less shapely as well, the palate is somewhat hulking from its structure, and the fruit more overtly sweet. Interestingly, despite the age, this is also much less resolved; likely the best days of this wine are yet to come.

A fantastic showing of this today, likely helped by the long double decant around 8 hours before service. Beautiful, classic Giacosa style with the pure red fruit and rose petals at the forefront. Elegant and light, but still jampacked with material, including some fruit-driven complexity on the palate that belies the wine's age. Bright acids also help keep this wine fresh.

Double decanted some 8 hours before service. This bottle didn't really work for me today; slightly dirty and brooding, with a blocky, charmless palate and some heavyset tannins. Frankly, a disappointing showing.

Not the most convincing showing today (a previous bottle a few years ago from what I expect to be the same source was far better). There isn't as much fruit as I would have expected given the sweetness on the palate for this wine. Quite earth-driven, this has fewer of the elegant florals and fruits that I tend to like. Much better with food; it seemed that food allowed the structure to become more apparent underneath the sweetness.

This didn't change very much from the pop and pour to service about 8 hours later. Very juicy and surprisingly more black-fruited than I would have expected for a 2004, with a somewhat silky tannic structure that feels like it's on the cusp of resolution. A little more volatility/balsamic on the nose than I really would like. I'll comment (perhaps for the last time) that I had read plenty about the inconsistency of this wine, but haven't noticed that myself at all.

In some perverse way, I had hoped that the difference between the Rupestris and Franco wasn't as stark as it was, so that I could have an excuse to not chase the Franco as much. Alas. This is better than the Rupestris in every way. The fruit is larger scaled but purer, as this doesn't seem to be as affected by the hint of volatility, and the slightly dirty earthiness has been dialled back. Even the texture of this wine is more interesting, as there seems to be a mix of big and little tannin particles. I'll add that the table preferred the Franco over the Rupestris, in every case.

A very interesting showing today; the fruit was very red and confected, almost to the point of candied cherries. Very lifted and elegant, this wasn't close at all to the clammed up, somewhat unpleasant bottle that I had over a year ago in the midst of the pandemic. Probably my least favourite of the flight; this just didn't have quite the same level of complexity as the other wines.

I feel like if you've read the notes on the 2004 Rupestris and Franco, and the 2008 Rupestris, you can probably extrapolate my tasting note for this wine. An amped up, all-round better version of the 2008 Rupestris with more fruit and complexity. Plenty of tannins, this is still obviously very chewy and young, but there is plenty of compelling material here that will make for a very interesting wine to revisit many years for now. I liked the more mature and resolved 2004 in comparison to this.

Beautifully light and elegant, this was more lifted and red-fruited than the 2001 Santo Stefano (di Neive). Crystalline purity here, with the red fruit the real star of the show, even if there are a good amount of tannins still (though they feel slightly powdery). Most at the table preferred this to the SS; I was probably the opposite because I thought the SS was more enjoyable paired with food.

Marked by strong volatile acidity.

It's so interesting to reread my old notes and discover that I felt the opposite way about this wine when compared to the Falletto a few years ago. Goes to show how fickle palates are and how little value these notes have in terms of reproducibility. Anyway, today, I found this wine the darker of the two, with more black fruit and a sterner tannic structure, all of which made it a better pairing for a delicious rabbit ragu over polenta.

There's a reason the Giacosa 2008s do not trade at a premium in the market, and the reason is that the wines are quite weak in the context of Giacosa. It has been a long time since I tasted this wine, but tonight I found it very weak, dilute, and unimpressive. A little muddled without the precision in the fruit that I've come to expect from the Bruno-era wines. Sweet, but also lacking concentration and complexity.

We were talking about the difficulty of the 2014 vintage in Piedmont, and I've carried the general notion that the vintage doesn't have problems in Barbaresco. This bottle is certainly in line with that; it's an impressive bottle of raw potential. Clean red fruit with no earthy elements to note right now. Lots of intensity in terms of concentration. Hard to say much more except that I'm bullish on this and would likely buy some of this if I didn't own any already, as I think this trades at a discount owing to the perceived poor quality of 2014 Piedmont.

From half-bottle. Intense botrytis; there are lots of typical botrytis spice notes, but also a slight hint of vanillin oak on the nose. The palate is concentrated botrytis; syrupy and sweet, a little goes a long way. Despite the chardonnay that goes into this I would have liked this to have a little more acidity to freshen up the wine. As it stands, it's pretty cloying if you're drinking more than a few small sips of it.