Anyway, enough of my griping. La Festa del Barolo is Antonio Galloni's annual paean to the wines and producers of Barolo and Barbaresco in the form of a Gala Dinner (on the Friday night) and a 15-producer Seminar and lunch (on Saturday), both held at Del Posto. This year's event was expanded to include a Thursday evening Winemaker Dinner with the inaugural event featuring Rinaldi wines.
The seminar was titled 2014 Barolo: Surprise, Surprise ... (a nod to the conditions that prevailed in the region but, against all odds, yielded some quality wines) and featured the following estates and representatives:
- Azelia (Lorenzo Scavino)
- Massolino (Franco Massolino)
- Renato Corino (Stefano Corino)
- E. Pira (Chiara Boschis)
- Brovia (Alex Sánchez)
- Armando Parusso (Marco Parusso)
- G.D. Vajra (Aldo Vaira)
- Giuseppe Rinaldi (Marta Rinaldi)
- Luciano Sandrone (Luciano Sandrone)
- Giacomo Conterno (Roberto Conterno)
- Elvio Cogno (Valter Fissore)
- Fratelli Alessandria (Vittore Alessandria)
- G.B. Burlotto (Fabio Alessandria)
- Roagna (Luca Roagna)
- Vietti (Luca Currado)
I will treat the wines tasted at the seminar in a later post but, given the importance of vintage conditions to this year's wines, I wanted to report directly (and separately) on what the producers had to say regarding conditions.
Antonio kicked off the discussion on the vintage. This was a vintage that he had come to like, he said, because he got to see it unfold over the year. It rained every day that he was there during the summer but there was a great end-of-season.
Lorenzo Scavino (shown in a picture below with the Rinaldi sisters and the author post-lunch) said that it was rainy and humid during the Spring and he had not had high hopes for the vintage. It was wet in the vineyards and this made it very difficult to work. His father called in Vineyard Managers and did "severe harvesting," keeping only the best clusters. Production was down 35% over the prior year in the Margheria vineyard.
Stefano Corino said that, initially, the color of the new wine was not intense but 6 months into the aging process, everyone changed their minds. It is skinnier than other vintages but "great parcels make great wines."
Chiara Boschis saw 2014 as a challenging vintage but thought that it produced wines with "very beautiful heart and soul." 2014, she said, reinforced the importance of terroir.
Brovia generally produces four single vineyard wines in a typical year but, given the challenge of 2014, they sold off 50% of the harvest and combined the remaining healthy grapes into a single Barolo wine named Unio.
Aldo Vaira identified three factors that allowed them to make quality wines even under the conditions that 2014 delivered:
- G.D. Vajra is on the west side of Barolo, where it is relatively windy. This wind allowed them to go to harvest with healthy grapes
- 2013 had been stressful on the vines so they had pruned less. This helped the vines recover from the 2013 vintage and be better able to battle the 2014 conditions.
- In the cellar they evolved the wines little by little.
For Marta Rinaldi, 2014 was a difficult year to be an organic farmer. By mid-July they had already done eight treatments. Another storm, but with less hail, came on July 29th. By August 8th, they had applied 10 treatments. That being said, non-Nebbiolo varieties had bigger problems, with Botrytis a constant threat. Alcohol was 1% less than in prior years. With the thinness of the grape skins, they only extracted for 18 days. The wines were poor after fermentation so they did less racking than normal.
Roberto Conterno said that this was one of the latest harvests on record. The last weeks are the most important, however, and, in this case, were excellent. He hearkened back to an old Piemontese saying: "A late vintage is always a great vintage."
For Luca Currado, the surprise for him was that he had fantastic wines even though the weather conditions were very difficult.
©Wine -- Mise en abyme
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