2016 Barbaresco Pajore
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Tasting notes
The 2016 Barbaresco Pajorè is powerful, dense and explosive, as the best wines from this site tend to be. Deeply balsamic, with tremendous depth, the 2016 opens up effortlessly on the palate. Readers will have to be patient, as the 2016 needs quite a bit of time to be at its best, despite its considerable appeal today. Menthol, spice, leather and licorice infuse a core of dark fruit with striking layers of nuance.
Critic scores
Average Score
Walter Speller, jancisrobinson.com
James Suckling
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The nose is so fragrant but deep, taking you on a roller-coaster ride through dried nutmeg and thyme, red licorice and tar, dark brambleberries and spices. The full-bodied palate has marvelous polish and brilliant minerality, but even these pale in comparison to the raw power and meatiness in which this Barbaresco excels. A wine that will stun now, but delight in 2023.
Sottimano has five vineyard sites, and the Pajorè site near Treiso has the poorest soils of them all. These wines are more elegant and ready as as result. The 2016 Barbaresco Pajoré sees 40-plus days of maceration and one month of submerged cap in oak (the same goes for all of their Barbarescos), and this can be done only when the skins are perfectly healthy. Remember that this is organic farming we're talking about. The skins are still crunchy. Here you'll find a spicy, elegant and sweet Nebbiolo that is fine and yet really covers the mouth well. I picked up some exotic flower notes that are hard to pinpoint, and once again, the nice saline mouthfeel is impressive. Some 6,000 bottles were made.
Treiso. Tasted blind. Dark ruby. Subdued and closed on the nose. Sweet fruit that is still very reluctant to come out on the palate and bags of coating tannins. Built like a stone house and monolithic for the moment. (WS)