2018 Fabio Gea Cul Otte

Community Tasting Notes (4)

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  1/22/2022 - soyhead wrote:

  decanted carefully based on prior CT notes.
  nose - fresh strawberry, pretty nose, reminds me of some homemade meads, could be chambolle, per erica too fresh
  mouth - so much strawberry its amazing. very dry. reminds me of etna (E: dont be insulting) fresh and lively almost in a white wine kind of way. a wine i might find myself drinking at Ordinaire. except its not orange.
  i find this to be extraordinary (natural wine crowd likely would agree)

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  2/17/2021 - NoahCap wrote:

  What an unusual, but (for me at least), enjoyable, bottle. The 2 prior reviewers warned about cloudiness/sediment, so I treated this bottle like a well aged Barolo: stored on its side and opened carefully in a wine cradle. This may seem ridiculous for a 2-3 year old wine, but I think it helped my enjoyment.
  
  Slowly pulling out the glass stopper provided a lively hiss of escaping effervescence. The wine poured off crystal clear and had a beautiful translucent ruby color, just like a young Chambolle. The nose is wonderful and emphasizes the aromatic lighter side of the Nebbiolo grape: cherry, florals, potpourri, a bit of spice, all melded and integrated. The nose carries into the palate and gives a reasonably long finish. Tannins are minimal, almost as if it were aged. The wine undoubtedly drinks young, but provides a youthful Nebbiolo fruit profile without the usual accompanying heaviness and tannins.
  
  The flaws in this bottling are the effervescence and the sediment. Personally, I don't mind the effervesce. In fact, I kind of enjoy it; reminds me that I'm drinking an organic living product. The sediment is a drag though. Very careful handling and decanting got me 4 good glasses and 1 that looked like it was dragged out of the bottom of a swamp that ended up down the drain. The sediment is incredibly fine and very badly behaved- it's practically stirred up by a cough in the next room over. My advice; let the bottle settle, handle carefully, and decant promptly over a candle flame (or a smart phone flashlight if you have no class).

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  6/17/2020 - jem@matiswarfield.com Likes this wine:

  Same experience as the below. Secondary fermentation fizz blew off after a few hours. Sorta felt like a cloudy red moscato. Was not at all what I was expecting but was very refreshing. The glass stopper is telltale that this needs to be consumed early. 3 more bottles in the crawl space so we will see how it develops.

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  5/28/2020 - thesternowl wrote: flawed

  I’ve been aware of Fabio Gea for a couple of years but his microscopic production coupled with living in Nebraska has meant famine for many wines in the Louis/Dressner portfolio...but we got “lucky” this year and our humble state was allocated a bunch of stuff that we rarely get offered to include some Radikon and this interesting release from Gea. Supposedly, it’s mostly if not all Nebbiolo and frankly, I don’t doubt that. The packaging is really cool with a bottle that looks half melted. There is no cork. Instead, it uses a glass stopper covered in wax. I’ll get right to it: this bottle was a bizarre experience and as natural as they come. It was as cloudy as any old wine that was more or less dead...but it was in fact very much alive. So much so, in fact, that it was effervescent; the telltale signs of secondary fermentation. On the nose, it was sour cherry fruit and undigested hay. On the palate, it was sour cherries and a touch...yeasty? It didn’t seem under-attenuated...but maybe? I can’t rate this. There is no way this was the intended result. From my perspective, it should never have been released. Bottle 756. Hopefully this is just a bad bottle.

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