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Luciano Sandrone

In his spacious new vinification facility outside the town of Barolo, Sandrone racks his nebbiolo off its skins very quickly after the fermentation in vertical steel tanks has finished, and the wines go into barrel by gravity. (Incidentally, Sandrone told me he has never used rotofermenters, as he finds this approach "too technological, too fast.") Although Sandrone employs barriques for his barbera and basic nebbiolo, the Barolos are aged mostly in 400- to 500-liter French oak barrels, about 20% of which are new each year, with barriques used only for experimentation or to store wine needed to top the larger barrels.Sandrone told me that 2000 featured hot summer weather, then warm nighttime temperatures in the weeks leading up to the harvest. The result, he said, was very ripe, low-acid wines with smooth tannins and high alcohol (in the 14.8% range, higher than that of '99 and '98), a bit like the '97s. In contrast, 1998 saw longer, slower ripening, thanks to more variation between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and Sandrone feels that these wines likewise will take a long time to mature. "Nineteen ninety-nine," Sandrone went on, "is a strong vintage but a bit different from the rest of the recent years: very red fruit in style, very pinot-like, very Burgundian. My '98s are more traditional."Interestingly, Sandrone is seriously considering bucking the trend toward vineyard-designated bottlings and going back to offering just one Barolo. "It's not an economic issue," he explained. "It's just that the old tradition was to assemble numerous parcels. Also, today people know and ask for our Cannubi Boschis, but we don't produce enough of this wine to satisfy demand. We're forced to raise the price of Cannubi so that we have enough to go around. Anyway, this is just an idea now: our most important aim would be to achieve more complex wines. For example, I believe that Cannubi would complete Le Vigne."

From Focus on Barolo and Barbaresco (Nov 2002) by Stephen Tanzer

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1999 Barolo Le Vigne

Color: Red

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