Third Annual White Truffle Charity Dinner
85 10th Avenue
New York, NY 10011
Tel. +1 (212) 497-8090
I am deeply grateful to a small group of food and wine lovers who came together in December 2009 to support my annual White Truffle Charity Dinner, held to benefit the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a debilitating brittle-bone disease, has difficulty attracting funding for research because it is such a rare disease relative to heart illness, diabetes, breast cancer all of which are much more common. I would also like to thank proprietors Joe Bastianich, Lidia Bastianch and Mario Batali for their generous contributions. Executive Chef Mark Ladner prepared a brilliant menu to match our wines. Each course was generously topped off with fragrant white truffles, a touch that elevated all of these dishes into the stratosphere. Proprietor Joe Bastianich and Wine Director Henry Davar made sure all of the details were executed to perfection. I say this every year at the conclusion of the event….but it will be hard to top this night next year!
A magnum of Krug’s 1976 Vintage kicks things off grand style. It remains an awesome, powerful wine packed with rich, textured fruit and an enveloping totally extroverted personality. Sadly, a magnum of Pol Roger’s 1975 Sir Winston Churchill, here in its first vintage, is slightly corked and impossible to evaluate.
I have had great luck with Bruno Giacosa’s wines from some of the lesser-known vintages of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, so I thought it would be fun to warm up with some long-forgotten wines before we moved into the Red Label Riservas. Not much is known today about vintages 1968 and 1969. Sheldon and Pauline Wasserman, among the foremost English-language Italian wine experts of their era, rated both vintages 0 out of 5 stars, as did Renato Ratti, the renowned producer and scholar the Wassermans cited frequently in their books. But as the old saying goes, there are no great vintages, just great bottles, and that is certainly the case here.
Giacosa’s 1968 Barbaresco Santo Stefano is delicate, pretty and wonderfully intact. To be sure, this is a relatively small-scaled Santo Stefano, yet the wine reveals gorgeous balance and a soft, perfumed finish. It is the perfect wine with which to start the evening. The 1969 Barbaresco is soft, round and perhaps even a touch simple, but it, too, is quite pretty and alive. The real surprise here is the 1969 Barbaresco Santo Stefano, which comes across as rich and powerful, showing awesome richness and depth. Although no upside remains with any of these 1960s Giacosa Barbarescos, if perfectly stored, they should keep another few years. Still, I am not tempted to push my luck with my own remaining bottles at this stage. Ceretto’s 1971 Barolo Vigneto Pitattore in Cannubi, an exceedingly rare wine, is a bit of a historical curiosity, but inserted blind into this flight last-minute it shows very nicely. The bouquet in particular is quite expressive and very much in the style of other important wines from this site, one of Barolo’s most famous. Though fully mature, the wine is quite beautiful and harmonious.
Above: A trio of pristine 1960s Bruno Giacosa Barbarescos
I have had the privilege – and I do mean privilege – of drinking Bruno Giacosa’s Red Labels from the 1960s and early 1970s a number of times recently and have never been anything less than deeply impressed. The wines are firing on all cylinders on this night. The 1964 Barbaresco Santo Stefano Riserva is sublime. Still showing touches of firmness, the wine flows with layers of sweet, spiced fruit, revealing incredible clarity, precision and the broad shoulders typical of the Barbarescos of Neive. There is a timeless elegance to this wine that I find incredibly appealing. The 1967 Barbaresco Asili Riserva is perhaps just a touch less interesting than the 1964 Santo Stefano. The fruit is wonderfully long, pure and silky but the wine is a bit more resolved. I have had the 1971 Barolo Riserva Le Rocche di Castiglione on two other occasions over the last few weeks, but this bottle is on another level. Entirely. Everyone at the table stops talking for a moment. Still deeply colored, the wine emerges from the glass with tons of dark fruit intermingled with sweet, mentholated, balsamic notes in a virile, powerful expression of this vineyard. The wine is utterly profound. That’s all there is to it.
We arrive at one of the most eagerly anticipated flights of the night. As requested by one of the attendees, this flight consists of four Giacosa wines from the fabled 1978 harvest, one of Giacosa’s very finest. Eddie asks why the Barbaresco Gallina has been dropped from the line-up. It hasn’t, but for some reason I forgot to open the bottle along with the other wines. Not a problem, the bottle is quickly opened and it is magnificent from the start. This wonderfully spiced, fragrant, mid-weight Barbaresco impresses for its purity and finesse. What a fabulous bottle. The 1978 Barbaresco Riserva Santo Stefano lives up to its reputation as one of the most profound wines ever made. The fruit shows a remarkable intensity, depth and purity. This is a sensual, compelling Barbaresco that conquers everyone at the table. The 1978 Barolo Riserva Villero is impeccable in its round, sweet fruit, with the sweet, balsamic notes that are the hallmark of this site. Giacosa’s 1978 Barolo Riserva Collina Rionda is sweet, ethereal and intensely perfumed in its roses, tar and licorice. This is an especially sensual, feminine bottle of the 1978 Rionda that contrasts dramatically with a much richer example I tasted a few weeks prior. Still it is exquisite and makes for a fine finish to this profound flight of Barolos and Barbarescos.
Above: An epic flight of Bruno Giacosa’s 1978 Barbarescos and Barolos
These four early Barolos from Giacomo Conterno are all beautiful, though in retrospect I should have placed them earlier in the evening next to Giacosa’s wines of the same era as it took some time for palates to recalibrate to this style after the massive 1978s. The 1961 Barolo is surprisingly fresh and far better than a bottle opened a few minutes prior. The aromatics are fresh and vibrant, and the wine reveals terrific balance in a mid-weight, ethereal style. The 1964 Barolo shows more fruit, depth and richness, with sweet mentholated notes that add complexity to the spiced fruit. Both the 1961 and 1964 are fully mature, and even under the best of circumstance the wines need to be drunk over the next few years at most. The estate’s 1967 Barolo takes things to another level in terms of its intensity and sheer depth. Though a touch rustic, it is a beautiful bottle from Giacomo Conterno. The 1971 Barolo is powerful, tannic and totally enveloping in its focused, vibrant fruit, foreshadowing what will come in the next flight of reds. The 1971 remains a benchmark Barolo from Conterno, and it is superb on this night.
