2010 Langhe Nebbiolo

The 2010 Langhe Nebbiolo is a pretty, mid-weight wine laced with sweet red berries, flowers, mint and spices. It shows only modest depth, with slightly unpolished tannins and a somewhat rough-around-the-edges personality. This is the only Produttori wine I have been less than enthused with over the last few years, but in a way that is only natural, as the other wines have improved markedly, and the Langhe Nebbiolo is the outlet for any juice that isn’t used for the higher-end wines. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2015. Produttori del Barbaresco, one of the world’s top cooperatives, has been making terrific wines for five decades. As good as the wines were in the past, my feeling was that at times the full potential of these sites – widely considered among the very best in Barbaresco – wasn’t being fully captured. The Produttori must have thought the same thing. Beginning in 2001, the Produttori began incentivizing their member growers to cultivate higher quality grapes. At the same time, the winery began a gradual process of rotating out their large 100-hectoliter casks and replacing them with smaller 50 and 75-hectoliter casks. The 2008 Riservas are the culmination of all of that work. I have been anxiously waiting to taste the Produttori’s 2008 Riservas since the end of that year’s harvest, when Managing Director Aldo Vacca told me the Riservas would almost certainly be bottled. Two recent tastings of the entire lineup were more than worth the wait. Simply put, these are the very best young Riservas I have ever tasted from the Produttori. The wines will require considerable patience, but they are stacked and packed with tremendous concentration of fruit allied to structure. It is a vintage Piedmont drinkers love to love, where the individual signatures of each terroir are clearly delineated. Best of all, the Riservas remain exceedingly fairly priced considering the quality of what is in the bottle. Congratulations to Aldo Vacca, longtime oenologist Gianni Testa and the entire team at Produttori del Barbaresco for this magnificent collection of 2008 Barbareschi. Importer: Vias Imports, New York, NY; tel. (212) 629-0200

(bottled ten days before my visit): Medium red. Light aromas of cherry, mint and flowers. Bright, clean and juicy but on the lean side, with a medicinal aspect and slightly drying tannins.

The 2010 Langhe Nebbiolo opens with a burst of fruit followed by sweeter, brighter floral notes that develop in the glass. This is a somewhat mid-weight, compact style typical of the vintage.