2001 Barolo Arborina

This wine was tasted as part of a side-by-side retrospective of Elio Altare’s Barolo Arborina and Langhe Arborina.

Elio Altare describes 2001 as a strong vintage with an early September rain that arrived at just the right moment. Over the years I have had the privilege to taste just about every wine made here. I have always been impressed with the ageworthiness of Altare's Baroli, and his other wines, too, to tell the truth. These 2001 Baroli are all exceptional. I am thrilled to have a few bottles left.

Elio Altare remains one of the leading figures in the Barolo landscape. Not only has Altare been hugely successful in his own right, he has also served as an inspiration and mentor to a new generation of winemakers who have been emboldened to pursue the path of quality production. Fermentations are carried out using indigenous yeasts and typically last around four days, (although the Brunate may see an additional day). The wines are aged in barriques, of which about 20% are new for both the normale and the Arborina, while the Brunate sees about 40%-50% new oak, depending on the vintage. Altare is often described as the quintessential modernist, but tasting his wines blind they really come across as much more classic than some would like to think. Sure, Altare prefers short fermentations and barrique aging for his wines, but these are merely techniques. The proof of a winemaker's mastery of these tools is ultimately in the glass, and this is a fantastic set of 2001s, from top to bottom. “I make wines, first and foremost, that I like, and I hope others will like as well. I love elegance, balance, and fruit because I like pinot noir. Why do I need to wait 10 years to know if a wine is good? If a wine is good when it is young, it will be even better when it is older. I try to make wines of finesse that people enjoy drinking. This is my philosophy,” says Altare. Even if Altare's wines are delicious when young, in structured vintages such as 1999 and 2001 these are wines that will surely improve with age. I have tasted nearly every vintage of Elio Altare's Barolo normale back to 1982 and seldom been disappointed.

Critics of new-wave Barolos that are fermented quickly in rotofermenters [usually, stainless steel cylindrical vats in which pigeage is done by means of a propeller that rotates inside the vat; in some cases, the entire tank itself slowly revolves] owe it to themselves to taste and follow Altare's superb wines, which provide significant early appeal and have proven to offer at least medium-term aging potential. Altare clearly would prefer to do as little extraction as possible to avoid getting wines whose tannins stand in the way of their early accessibility. As he describes it:"Why carry out longer fermentations, get tougher tannins, and then have to fine the wines to get them back into balance?Is it better to make a wine that will be better after 20 years than one that will be better for its first 20 years?"Altare noted that it's the wine media, through its consistent praise for his wines, that has enabled him to do short fermentations, and he maintains that his wines have aged just fine. He typically does just three days or so of maceration for his Arborina and five or six for Brunate, which he says requires more extraction. The wines are racked for the second time after they finish their malolactic fermentations in stainless steel in March, and then go into barriques, 20% of which are new, for 18 to 20 months of what he describes as "a Burgundian elevage. "During this period, the wines normally are not racked. Instead, Altare uses micro-oxidation if the wines become reduced; on the whole, he prefers "a natural reduction" so that he doesn't have to use SO2. His wines then spend their final several months back in cuve before being bottled. Altare describes the 2000s as elegant wines that are more ready to drink than the '99s. The 2001s, he adds, are sturdier wines that are midway between the fleshier 2000s and more serious, tannic 1999s. (Marc de Grazia; numerous importers, including Michael Skurnik Wines, Syosset, NY; Vin Divino, Chicago, IL; and Estate Wines Ltd. , San Rafael, CA)