Recommendation: Expensive, but a VERY memorable wine.
Paired With: Just tasted, no food.
Tasting:
He said: Today I had the unique opportunity to sample this wine for a second time. My son gave me a bottle of this Barolo for my birthday and Vicky and I celebrated the occasion with my son and his wife by doing a blind tasting of this wine and a “grocery store Cabernet” (see our March 16th review of Pederi Aldo Conterno Barolo Romarisco, 2006. In a nut shell the Barolo was VERY disappointing and simply put, a terrible wine!!! With that bad experience Vicky and I had written off expensive Borolo wines telling each other we would NEVER buy one of those again.
Today, Russ Anderson, owner of the Caviste Wine Store (thecavistews.com) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina texted me and said he had the same wine last night and would I like a taste that he had saved for me. Silly question, I drove my lawn mower into the garage and drove directly to his shop. And, I would describe the tasting as…WOW (in bold caps), one sniff and I knew it was a whole different wine than the one we had in March. This was a Barolo that had intense cherry, dark fruit and mushroom aromas, smooth layered dark fruit taste intertwined with smoke, mushrooms and mineral. Smooth and so well balanced. A powerful, complex wine that was not even in the same ball game as the bottle we had in March.
So what’s the moral of this story…when you purchase older (and expensive) wines, know how they’ve been stored. Our bottle in March came off a shelf at Total Wine in North Ridge, California. And, after the delicious tasting today I would seriously question how the wine had been handled and stored over the years in both the warehouse and the retail store.
We would probably never have had a chance to taste this Barolo again had it not been for this unique tasting opportunity. When I returned to North Carolina in early Spring I told Russ about our terrible Barolo experience, and when the opportunity arose he provided a tasting where I could try it again. Tell me this isn’t a VERY, VERY special wine shop!!!
She said: