Splash decanted, served ~ 50F; seemed just right. Consistent with the bottle of eight months ago, good>very good, though I still conclude there's (this bottle/vintage) just not enough acidity to carry this volume of (tropical/orchard) fruit. Was more enjoyable on its own than with food. Love the wine, just not so much in this vintage. 14,0% abv. recommended
Good>vg on PnP. Typical guava/apple/etc on the palate, and nose with avg complexity and length. Not (this bottle, anyway) a top vintage for this wine, and at 8 years, it should be pretty talkative. Much better after an hour of air, and as it approached room vs service temp. Now and the next five years. Easily recommended as it's delicious notwithstanding. recommended
Clearly approaching its peak in my opinion, whit an expression that delivers both weight, freshness and complexity. That being said, it still contains the acidity to live for quite a while. Medium+ acidity, great integrated. It gives you tones of lemon and grapefruit, beeswax, ripe musk melon, chalk and a floral tone as well (maybe lilies). The balance is very good and the aftertaste quite long. A superb buy QPR vice and a 93 for me a this point.
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(Cantina Terlano Pinot Bianco Riserva Vorberg) Hello friends. I’ve been collecting the wines of Cantina Terlano, in Italy’s northern Alto Adige region, for at least five years, and I’ve been chasing a Full Pull offer for at least that long. Why? I’ll let the maestro of Italian wine, Antonio Galloni, introduce the winery (from his introduction to the estate for Vinous in 2013): What is left to say about Terlano? That it is a world-class estate? Too obvious. That the wines have enormous personality? Of course. That the range is full of great values? Evident. During a recent visit I also tasted a number of older wines, culminating with the extraordinary trio of the 1959 and 1955 Pinot Bianco Vorberg followed by the 1969 Terlaner, which is and will probably remain the single greatest Italian white wine I have ever tasted. Numbers are superfluous. While those older wines are virtually impossible to find, readers will have better luck with the late-release Rarita series, which are generally aged one year in cask and as much as ten additional years in tank prior to being bottled. A few weeks ago I shared a bottle of Terlano's 1955 Pinot Bianco with a group of collectors at a charity dinner. Not just any collectors. I mean the type of winelovers who regularly open bottles most of us dream of tasting once in a lifetime. They were blown away. None of them had ever tasted a white that old, much less an Italian white with serious bottle age. This is Terlano. One of the few wineries in the world capable of making not just great wines, but emotional wines. The reason we’ve been chasing – not offering – Terlano wines has been all about supply. These wines aren’t imported into the United States in any great quantity; even less so to the Deep Space Nine outpost that is the PacNW. But then our successful Gruner Party offer from April set a blueprint for how to make this work. Expand the number of wines offered (just like with the Gruner party, it’s four wines), which offsets the limited quantities available. You may recall from that Gruner offer this note that I wrote: When it comes to European white wines, there are three regions I see as dramatically undervalued compared to their inherent quality and (in some cases) ability to age: the Savoie in eastern France, Alto Adige in northern Italy, and Austria. When I peruse the shelves of my little pantry cellar, a high proportion of the old-world whites come from one of those three places. We’ve dialed in Savoie the past few years via our Jean Vullien offers, we had our Gruner Party in April, so that just leaves one: glorious Alto Adige. I could try to describe this region, its pockets of vineyards nestled up above rust-roofed villages and below the towering Dolomites, its mishmash of Italian-German-Austrian culture, but if you have a few moments, I’d rather direct you to James Suckling’s wonderful new documentary, The Miracle of Alto Adige. The whole 24-minute video is worth a watch, but if you only check out the first six minutes, you’ll see a flyover introduction to the region, and then the first winery featured is – you guessed it – Terlano. Terlano is actually a co-op, boasting 230 grape-growing members, of whom 70% are original founding families from 1892. The members farm and contribute grapes, which are turned into wine in one large facility and bottled and marketed under the Cantina Terlano label. Co-ops are not always synonymous with high-quality wine, but Ian D’Agata, writing of Terlano in Vinous in 2017, noted that “surprising as it may seem, Italy’s best white wine producer may be a co-operative. Certainly no producer in the country makes longer-lived white wines than the Cantina Terlano.” He said this after participating in a library tasting of reserve Pinot Bianco’s from 1959 to 2014. Lucky man. We’re going to focus on the reserve Pinot Bianco today as well as another Terlano wine so classic it has its own personal appellation. And then we’ll wrap up with a quick-hitter pair of bonus wines that should be more familiar: a Pinot Grigio and a Pinot Noir.In our offer over the summer, I said: “The 2015 is just released, so there are no reviews yet, but Vorberg oftentimes grabs 94pt and 95pt reviews and occasionally inches up to 96s.” Check this out, from December: Vinous: Copyrighted material withheld. Prescient! First 96er for Vorberg since the 2002 vintage, and we still have a small parcel kicking around of one of the great white wines of the world. Originally offered June 2018. Archive.
NOTE: Some content is property of Decanter and Vinous and JancisRobinson.com and Full Pull.
3/28/2024 - Alex Barbera Likes this wine: 91 Points
2014 hat mich noch einen Notch mehr geflashed - aber PB AA at Prime. Beate verträgt ihn nicht, Hautreaktion.
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3/4/2024 - Tim Heaton Likes this wine:
Splash decanted, served ~ 50F; seemed just right. Consistent with the bottle of eight months ago, good>very good, though I still conclude there's (this bottle/vintage) just not enough acidity to carry this volume of (tropical/orchard) fruit. Was more enjoyable on its own than with food. Love the wine, just not so much in this vintage. 14,0% abv. recommended
https://www.ItalianWine.blog
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9/18/2023 - FransS wrote: 93 Points
Precise, completely in balance, ripe fruit, no sweetness, concentrated, purity, perfect ripe citrus and the exitement I missed a bit in 2021.
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8/11/2023 - Tim Heaton Likes this wine:
Good>vg on PnP. Typical guava/apple/etc on the palate, and nose with avg complexity and length. Not (this bottle, anyway) a top vintage for this wine, and at 8 years, it should be pretty talkative. Much better after an hour of air, and as it approached room vs service temp. Now and the next five years. Easily recommended as it's delicious notwithstanding. recommended
https://www.ItalianWine.blog
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10/3/2022 - …. wrote: 93 Points
Clearly approaching its peak in my opinion, whit an expression that delivers both weight, freshness and complexity. That being said, it still contains the acidity to live for quite a while. Medium+ acidity, great integrated. It gives you tones of lemon and grapefruit, beeswax, ripe musk melon, chalk and a floral tone as well (maybe lilies). The balance is very good and the aftertaste quite long. A superb buy QPR vice and a 93 for me a this point.
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