Community Tasting Notes 118

• chokkon Likes this wine:

  November 20, 2023 - no decant; 18c; bottle opened for a couple of hours; clean, coppered color; subtle nose of tobacco, raspberries; intense initial attack, rasping tannins over solid red fruit, giving minute-long, gripping finish (tannins softened nicely with some more hours); schist, iron water, raspberries, cherries, tobacco; a huge wine after so many years in the cellar, could hang in for another decade; 18.5

  Comment

• Montesquieu Likes this wine: 96 points

  August 27, 2023 - It feels great when a wine delivers on a special evening with friends after patiently aging in your cellar for 15+ years. This is a fine aged Barolo of high caliber. Others provided good descriptors, so I'll just suggest that it's peaking now, relative to my other two bottles consumed in years past. A one hour decant proved sufficient.

  Comment

• hrazdiiv Likes this wine: 95 points

  January 7, 2023 - This wine is excellent. I approached a bit skeptically given WS original 99 pt score but this truly delivered (albeit not 99). The color is two shades darker than I expected for a 21 year old Barolo, perhaps belying some of the flavorful intensity. A bit of bricking at the rim. Opening nose was on the earthy side: licorice, forest floor, charcoal, tar. Nice grippy tannins holding it all together. What merited the high score was the evolution of the wine. We drank undecanted for about four hours and it kept evolving to become increasingly complex and interesting. After a couple of hours, the earthy nose turned into baking spices and darker fruits, all the while holding on to it's tannic structure - not something you see too often. I toggled back and forth between a 94 and 95, ultimately deciding on the latter because the last sip was the best - what you want from an elite bottle of wine. For Barolo fans of any stripe, this will not disappoint.

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• lebo9968@gmail.com Likes this wine: 90 points

  November 24, 2022 - Pretty brick color. Nose and palate were open upon uncork and 1st pour. Definitely new world style. Fruit forward, but still very dry, tannic and woody. The wood was nicely integrated, but there was quite a bit of it. Seems nicely aged at this point; not sure how this would continue to evolve.

  Comment

• Robmcl920 Likes this wine: 92 points

  October 16, 2022 - The '01 Ginestra is a very enjoyable, albeit clearly very modern, Barolo. While it remains tannic and muscular, the flavor profile suggests to me that the wine is drinking at around peak.
  
  The nose is nicely perfumed with dark red plum fruit, licorice, sweet spices, tobacco, and a touch of mint. On the palate, the wine is medium in body with medium to high tannin, with tannin exploding in the mouth and still very drying on the midpalate to the finish, a bit grainy in texture. I found a similar dark red, plum / cherry fruit profile along with licorice and sweet spices.
  
  This wine seems fairly similar to the old Azelia or Scavino wines I've tasted, in that while the flavor profile retains a bit of the 'modern' profile (the kind of spice I found in this wine reminds me of other Barolo aged in new oak), the biggest tell that it's a more modern wine seems to be this aggressive, hard to integrate tannin (from the wood?) that all these wines seem to have.

  Comment

Pro Reviews 3

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2001
• Type Red
• Producer Conterno Fantino
• Varietal Nebbiolo
• Designation n/a
• Vineyard Sorì Ginestra
• Country Italy
• Region Piedmont
• SubRegion Langhe
• Appellation Barolo
• UPC Codes 726452006437, 726452007588, 726452013237

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 22 (1%)
• In Cellars 1,365 (55%)
• Consumed 1,084 (44%)

Food Pairing

Who Likes This Wine

More About This Wine