2009 Barolo Vecchie Vite dei Capalot e Brunate Riserva

The 2009 Barolo Riserva Vecchie Viti dei Capalot e delle Brunate (tasted in magnum) shows deep espresso and coffee notes at the outset that transform to dark fruit and sweet dark fruit. This is a full and generous wine with enormous clarity and power. Starting with the 2010 vintage, it will be called “Barolo Riserva Capalot” and 2011 will be the last year of production. Drink: 2016-2035. Roberto Voerzio started buying prized vineyard parcels in 1982 and has since amassed one of the most important portfolios of single-vineyards (15 parcels over totaling 12 hectares) in La Morra (with Sarmassa and a piece of Cerequio in the neighboring township of Barolo). He follows a unique winemaking philosophy that is somewhere on the spectrum between traditionalists and modernist, but Roberto himself brushes off these broad stroke categories with a shrug and a smile. “In the years between 2003 and 2007, my approach to oak changed over and over. I went from larger containers to smaller ones and back again to larger,” he says: “Ultimately no one really noticed. What is noticeable however is his non-interventionist’s approach. He uses ambient years without sulfites for the fermentations followed by spontaneous malolactic fermentations and does not filter. He also chooses different bottle formats to represent each wine (with a generous array of large format bottles) and sells them in meticulously numbered lots. Fossati was latest acquisition with 20 and 30 years vines. Importer: Winebow, www.winebow.com