TNs: Italian night

[Michael Malinoski]

A friend of mine recently arranged for five of us to join him for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Newton that I had never previously been to. At the last minute, he fell ill and couldn’t attend, but the rest of us carried on and drank some fine wines with the tasty dishes that came streaming out of the kitchen.

2008 Vollenweider Riesling Wolfer Goldgrube Kabinett Mosel. This wine has a very pleasing bouquet filled with aromas of peaches, apples, lime, river stones and faint whispers of slate. In the mouth, it has great pop and snap to go along with delicious and pliant sweet apple fruit flavor. It shows bracing power to go along with lacy pectin sweetness and an all-around lovely mouthfeel—finishing clean, long and lifted. It does get sweeter and sweeter-seeming as the night goes on, but it also stays lively and fun. It’s a real nice way to get things started.

2006 Paolo Bea San Valentino Umbria IGT. This wine presents a fresh and bright nose of red cherry fruit, dried flowers, gamy leather and herbs aromas. In the mouth, it’s got some fun funky sweat, tea leaves, smoked cherry and bright cranberry sorts of things going on, but it’s exceedingly dry right now. The acidity is bright and tangy but combined with the fairly big tannins, it makes for a bit of a tough bird just now, to be honest. It has the goods, but I’d rather see if it mellows a bit with some time in the cellar. The 2007 is a lot more fun and floral, and for now that’s the one I’d suggest drinking in the short term.

2006 Azienda Agricola Eugenio Rosi Poiema Vallagarina IGT. The nose here is full, deep, dark and brooding, with plush aromas of black cherry, smoke, tobacco leaf and green forest bits. In the mouth, it’s meaty, chewy, burly and dark—not really a wine for those seeking elegance or nuance. It’s full of warm fruit flavors that are yielding and wholesomely earthy, but rustic and straight-ahead. It seemed to be fairly liked around the table, but it wasn’t my cup of tea, really.

2001 Fattoria di Fèlsina Berardenga Chianti Classico Riserva Rancia. I would call this a rather old-fashioned sort of wine, with a manly, cool, serious and reserved bouquet of black leather, tobacco, dark soil, red currants and whole cranberries. In the mouth, it has a lovely savory and mineral-tinged red and purple berry fruit flavor profile that I like a lot. It’s dry and classically structured, with a tightly-woven, tacky texture that sticks in the mouth a good long while on the finish. It stays cool and tight around a tense backbone all the way through, and it delivers very fine drinking that ought to get even better down the line, in my opinion.

1997 Sottimano Barbaresco Currá. The nose here is almost subtly sexy in a way, with tight but appealing aromas of mixed wild berries, rich incense and leafy menthol. In the mouth, it’s full of creosote, scorched earth and tar sorts of notes in support of plump and tangy berry and sour cherry fruit and bitter dark chocolate flavors. A fine twist of acidity gives it a tart edge at times, and there is certainly no shortage of tannin still hanging around. Indeed, I do worry a bit about the tannin outliving the fruit, but for now I’m prone to suggest waiting it out another few years.

2009 Cantina del Pino Barbaresco Ovello. Not surprisingly, the nose on this wine is still pretty tight and formative, but it does slowly open up to reveal dusty aromas of cherry, raspberry, fine earth and dried caramel. On the palate, it’s somewhat surprisingly light and airy, with a fresh, lattice-like texture and flavor profile. Although it is clearly young, it’s not all that tannic or bruising, just a bit straightforward and leafy right now. It certainly will be interesting to see how it evolves over the next decade or so.

2000 Bruno Giacosa Barolo. This beautiful wine delivers full-blown, expansive and layered aromas of black cherries, limestone, classy earth, leather, tobacco and porcini mushrooms that are really lovely, if still young and strapping at times. In the mouth, it has an almost regal feel to it, with a classy red cherry and raspberry fruit core supported by serious structure and sinew. It’s full-flavored and delicious, but probably still holding plenty in reserve. Everybody really liked this, needless to say.

1996 Marcarini Barolo Brunate. Here one finds an absolutely classic and compelling Barolo bouquet to sit and enjoy, as it offers up lovely scents of lilac soap, rose petals, old shoe leather, peppercorns and crumbled tar to go along with black cherry and mixed berry fruit. In the mouth, it delivers a wonderful streak of juicy fruit, funky porcini and white pepper flavors but it fairly quickly cinches up tight on the finish with aggressive acidity and abundant tannins. It’s juicy as hell, with a bright and tangy berry fruit core, but it definitely needs another 5 years at least to resolve the tannin and mellow the acidity.

1998 Alois Kracher Grande Cuvée TBA #10 Nouvelle Vague. This pours out of the bottle like maple syrup, with the thick and viscous legs immediately apparent on the inside of the glass. It offers up stunningly gorgeous aromas of dark peaches, dried apricots, toasted citrus peel, yellow raisins, caramel and loads of exotic botrytis spices that just totally coat the olfactory senses. And it’s even better in the mouth, where the luscious and layered flavors of liquid caramel, toasted orange peel, fig, yellow raisin and marmalade soar on for minutes on the finish. The density and concentration of flavor is seriously impressive, and the slinky mouthfeel is just tremendous. It’s hedonism at its absolute finest.

2005 Jorge Ordoñez & Co. Málaga #3 Old Vines. This is pretty rich on the nose, but not quite as full-tilt unctuous as the Kracher, showing off aromas of honey, liquid caramel, yellow raisins, nectarine and wildflowers. It’s stacked and packed on the palate, though, with long and sticky flavors of yellow raisins, peaches, apricot preserves, brown sugar and caramel. The sweetness is more direct and less exotic in tone than with the Kracher, but it also demonstrates great length, amazing density of flavor, and an intensely sweet richness. An acidic tang becomes more and more pronounced as the evening progresses, but this is just super-sweet, sticky stuff that’s a lot of fun to drink.


-Michael