2000 Barolo Gavarini Chiniera

Elio Grasso is among the growers who captured the essence of 2000. Grasso remains one of the most overlooked, under the radar producers in Piedmont. I buy the wines every year, but never seem to be able to keep my hands off the bottles. The estate's 2000 are marvelous.

Gianluca Grasso says the family estate sacrificed 60% of the crop in 2002 by doing two green harvests plus a third selection in the cellar in quest of riper fruit, yet will only make a single Barolo. "The vineyard designations should be reserved for the best expressions of our parcels," he explained. The scorching summer of 2003 brought virtually the opposite problems as 2002. "If I could have stuck leaves on the vines to protect the grapes from sun, I would have," Grasso told me. "It was a big mistake to de-leaf in 2003. "Grasso is high on his 2001 Barolos. "It was a fantastic summer for nebbiolo, with great harvest weather; the fruit was ripe but not overripe," he explained, adding that his other recent favorites are '98 and '96. The wines here have grown in aromatic purity and complexity in recent vintages. Grasso told me that, beginning in 2000, with each racking he scrapes a bit of wet wood from the barrels (and also uses sulfur); this technique he says, has eliminated most of the animal and leather tastes in the wines and facilitated better oxygenation during elevage. (Importers include Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; Martin-Scott Wines, Ltd. , Lake Success, NY; Langdon-Shiverick, Cleveland, OH; and Oliver McCrum Wines, Oakland, CA)

This was my first visit to the Grassos' beautiful estate tucked into the hills behind Monforte d'Alba, overlooking the Gavarini vineyard. Elio Grasso's son Gianluca has joined his father since getting a degree in economics, and now does most of the cellar work while Elio handles the vineyards. The Grasso wines have long boasted strong material, but today's bottles appear to be more consistent, and perhaps finer, than the wines of the mid-'90s, with a more obvious emphasis on fruit than formerly. The Grassos offer three single-vineyard Barolos, two made in a more traditional style and the third, the Runcot, aged for 30 months in all new barriques The Barolos are fermented in vertical stainless steel tanks in which automatic pumpovers are done, and spend 10 to 15 days on their skins. The cellar is warmed to 20oC to facilitate the malolactic fermentations, which normally finish in December. Gianluca Grasso uses micro-oxidation to avoid racking his barbera and nebbiolo cuvees but prefers more traditional racking every three months for Barolo. Grasso describes 2000 as a warm, alcoholic style, from a rather low crop level. (2001 was a bigger, fruitier crop in comparison, he adds.) Like a number of his colleagues in Monforte d'Alba, Grasso compares '99 in style to '96, and feels that this vintage will be capable of long bottle aging. (Importers include Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ and Martin-Scott Wines, Ltd., Lake Success, NY)