2014 Barolo Monfortino Riserva

The Giacomo Conterno 2014 Barolo Riserva Monfortino is made with 100% fruit from the Francia cru, which is not the case for the 2015 vintage (that sees 22% Arione in the blend) or likely future vintages. In a sense, this 100-point wine represents a milestone or a chapter finale in the long and exciting trajectory of Italy's collected and revered Monfortino. I've had the great fortune of tasting this wine from barrel over the course of four years and twice again this summer during my visits to the Conterno estates (in Gattinara and in Monforte d'Alba). Roberto Conterno has long been referring to 2014 as "the vintage of his heart." There had been challenging rain during the summer, but by the end of August, Roberto knew that a window of warm and dry weather could make 2014 "the vintage of the century," he tells me. On cue, the skies opened, and the sun came shining through in September and lasted through harvest in the second half of October. As a result, this was a very long growing season and that is something the Nebbiolo grape loves most. You taste this in the tannic quality of the wine that is long, silky, elegant and firm. That quality texture and structure will carry this bottle over a half century of bottling aging, or more. From an analytical point of view, this 2014 vintage is the most tannic Monfortino made in 30 years, but you'd hardly know it thanks to the smooth integration displayed here. The wine's bouquet is nuanced and fine with redcurrant, mint, blood orange, toasted aniseed, baked clay and tarry smoke. Initially, you get a savory touch of succulent grilled meat that adds to the "chewy" quality of the wine that Roberto Conterno often attributes to his favorite vintages of Monfortino. A note about corks: Extreme care is dedicated to quality control, and each of the 4,000 to 5,000 corks ordered for this wine are sniffed by human noses on team Conterno before making the cut.

Serralunga d’Alba.  Lustrous mid ruby with orange tinges. Cool and concentrated with a fine minerally note of liquorice dust. Huge depth. Still tightly wound, succulent fruit with bags of coating tannins and nervy, long acidity. Perfumed, complex and long and even a little more refined than 2013. Its length can only be measured in light years. (WS)

The 2014 Barolo Riserva Monfortino has always been a remarkable wine. It is all that, and so much more, on this day. The long growing season and late harvest resulted in a Monfortino with tremendous aromatic nuance, extraordinary beauty and impossibly finessed tannins. The extreme purity of the 2014 is simply stunning. Vivid and nuanced, the 2014 is utterly exquisite. Stylistically, the 2014 reminds me of vintages like 2004 and 2008 that are built more on finesse and persistence rather than power alone. As in 2013, Roberto Conterno did not bottle his Barolo Francia. Instead, he chose to use all of the fruit for the flagship Barolo Monfortino, which up until the present, he had only done twice previously, in 2013 and 2002.