Bruno Giacosa Dinner at Legacy Records

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | AUGUST 15, 2023

This Bruno Giacosa retrospective and dinner, part of our ten-year anniversary celebration, was a great opportunity to go back and visit a wide range of benchmark wines from one of Piedmont’s most illustrious producers. To be honest, I had a hard time narrowing the selection down to a reasonable number of wines for a single evening. I chose to focus on vintages from Giacosa’s prime, wines that remain the reference points for the estate.

I have written extensively about Bruno Giacosa and his extraordinary career. Readers may wish to revisit those articles, listed below, for greater context. Suffice it to say that Giacosa was one of the pioneers of quality wines in Piedmont. I have said it many times, but it bears repeating – Bruno Giacosa was the first truly modern producer in Piedmont. He helped usher in the era of single-vineyard wines and paid more attention to cleanliness in the cellar and precision winemaking than many of his contemporaries. Tastings with Giacosa were always among the highlights of my trips to Piedmont. He never said much, preferring to jot down notes on the butcher paper laid out on his tasting room table. But every word was precious and full of insight. In those days, the wines were often simply mind-blowing in their beauty, scale and profound intensity.

A deep survey of wines from Bruno Giacosa’s prime years.

The team at Legacy Records, led by Delicious Hospitality Group Wine Director Celia Erickson and Legacy Records’ Beverage Director Theo Lieberman, did a terrific job with the wines. We opened all the bottles a few hours ahead of service, discarded any that did not meet my standards and then double-decanted to remove sediment. The menu was delicious and complementary to the wines.

My favorite flight was the 2004s. The 2005s aren’t on the same level, but they are still gorgeous wines in a more nervy style that I personally find quite appealing. The 2000s and 2001s are still fabulous, if they have been stored properly and if the corks have held, which they have not in all cases. Once into the 1990s, provenance becomes a real issue, as these wines were not considered collectibles when they were released and therefore were often not treated appropriately. I remember the first bottles of 1989 Santo Stefano Riserva that I bought at retail before I fully appreciated how important storage is. They were sitting in a rack, fully exposed to light and warm temperatures. Of course, the bottles were shot when I opened them.

To Start...the Vibrant 2005s

2005 Barbaresco Asili & 2005 Barbaresco Rabajà