2003 Barolo: Ten Years Later

The 2003 vintage in Barolo will be remembered for a scorching hot, dry summer that pushed growers to the maximum. Ten years later, how have the wines turned out?

I have very clear recollections of 2003, the last year I lived in Italy before returning to Boston for graduate school. The weather was brutally hot day and night. In restaurants, wines served chilled from the cellars would become undrinkably warm in a matter of minutes. The extreme heat wave became a public health crisis, especially among the elderly. It was that bad. 

With a few exceptions, the 2003 Barolos are deeply marked by the torrid conditions of the year. That much is evident. Classicists will undoubtedly prefer cooler vintages such as 2004, 2005 and 2008 and/or the great recent, highly structured years such as 2006, even if it is too soon for those wines to give their best. But in restaurants or other settings where immediacy is a virtue, the best 2003s will deliver plenty of pleasure. 

The cellar at Elvio Cogno, Novello

The cellar at Elvio Cogno, Novello

The 2003 Growing Season

Piedmont saw 40 days of uninterrupted blistering temperatures during he summer with no rain or respite of any kind. Just as importantly, the diurnal shifts that are so critical for the full development of color, perfume and tannins were nowhere to be found. When faced with sweltering temperatures and no rain, plants shut down in an effort to conserve energy and simply survive, which meant the skins and seeds stopped ripening. Sugars continued to mount, however, which threw off any semblance of balance. Top growers knew how to keep the vines in somewhat healthy equilibrium, but it wasn’t easy. 

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The 2003 vintage in Barolo will be remembered for a scorching hot, dry summer that pushed growers to the maximum. Ten years later, how have the wines turned out?

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