2004 Barbaresco Crichët Pajè

The room is buzzing with energy as our Crichët Pajé is about to kick off. It’s one of the things I love most about our events: the enthusiasm, passion and deep knowledge guests bring to these lunches and dinners. The 60th floor at Manhatta is especially evocative on this morning. A thick blanket of fog weaves throughout the New York City skyline as if we had arranged for the most perfect Barbaresco meets New York views imaginable. We aren’t that good.

This is an intriguing set of new releases from Alfredo and Luca Roagna. Most of the Barbarescos and Barolos are from 2017, a year with heat and drought that yielded wines with less depth and structure than is typically the case in more favorable vintages. Vineyard signatures aren’t quite as delineated as they can be, but that is also to be expected. Readers will note the addition of a new wine, a Riserva of Crichët Pajè. Other than that, things are pretty much the same as always. Long macerations, extended time in barrel and a generally hands off approach in both the vineyards and cellar are the rules. Time always feels like it slows down here. That’s exactly what wines feel like. I tasted through the range twice: once in September just after bottling and then again about two months later.

The ambitious young Luca Roagna, whose great-grandfather produced wine in Barbaresco at the end of the 19th century, recently completed a huge new low-impact winery in Castiglione Falletto, where he will vinify both Barbaresco and Barolo in 2013 in big, open wood vats and then age them in all-used 30-to-60-hectoliter barrels.While some insiders describe today's Roagna wines as modern, they are actually rather traditional (for his part, Roagna describes his style as "postmodern:I look for the purity of the variety"), with total maceration time of 60 to 90 days, and cappello sommerso employed in an attempt to get a soft extraction of tannins.Roagna eschews pumping over the must early in the fermentation, explaining that "if you extract tannins in the presence of alcohol, the wines will be greener."He described himself as a late picker, as he looks for "crisp seeds."Roagna bottles his Barolos and Barbarescos late, then holds the wines back prior to release.He only recently shipped his 2008s to the U.S. market, which accounts for a sizable 25% of his sales.The top cuvees here are quite limited, typically ranging from 600 to 2,000 bottles per year (his total production is between 50,000 and 70,000 bottles annually and his huge new facility provides cool storage conditions for a million bottles).Roagna, who told me that he'd really rather not reach conclusions about the quality of a vintage before it's 20 years old, describes 2006 as "classic, never a primary expression," while the 2007s are "more open, more rich."The 2008s, he added, are characterized by their purity of fruit and elegance and offer great aging potential.He was not quite ready to show, or even talk about, his 2009s.

Luca Roagna bottles a bit (or a lot!) later than most producers, so the 2008 Barolos are the current release. For ease of reference, I have also included notes on Roagna's 2008 Barbarescos, and two older wines that are just being released. Over the last few years, Roagna has made an effort to release most of his wines of the same vintage together, which makes it easier to keep track of the wines. Roagna is also using better corks befitting of wines meant to be aged as normal. Lastly, the new, cavernous cellar in Castiglione Falletto is nearly complete, which hopefully will allow Roagna to address the small imperfections that have at times been the Achilles heel here. For the rest, everything is the same; low yields, late harvests, very long macerations and long elevage in oak all remain cornerstones of the approach at this historic family-run property with choice parcels in Barbaresco and Castiglione Falletto.