2001 Barolo Francia

Readers fortunate enough to own Conterno's 2001s would do well to forget about the wines for a good 5-10 years. These are some of the most backward, Barolis of the vintage.

Ask producers in the region which wine represents the pinnacle of winemaking in the Langhe the answer you are most likely to hear is Giacomo Conterno's Barolo Riserva Monfortino, which has long been an iconic wine in these parts. The estate produces three wines, all from its Cascina Francia vineyard in Serralunga. The Barbera is usually one of the top wines in the region. It sees 21 months of aging in medium size casks before being released. Conterno is most known for his two Barolos, Cascina Francia and the Monfortino Riserva, which is only produced in top vintages. When the vintage warrants, Conterno makes a selection of the very best grapes just before harvest, and this fruit is destined for the Monfortino. Depending on climactic conditions various parcels within the Cascina Francia vineyard mature differently, so the exact source of the fruit for the Monfortino can vary from year to year. Cascina Francia is fermented in stainless steel, with temperature control, for 3-4 weeks. Aging takes place in large Slavonian oak casks for 4 years. For the Monfortino, the grapes are fermented in a combination of open-top wood vats and stainless steel tanks without temperature control for 4-5 weeks. The wine is then aged in a single large Slavonian oak cask for 7 years. Conterno employs a very minimalist approach in the cellar when it comes to making his wines. He believes the work is done in the vineyards, where his yields are typically below 4,000 kilos per hectare. Conterno employs only natural yeasts and the wines are not fined or filtered prior to bottling. Both of Conterno's Barolos are legendary for their extraordinary complexity and aging potential. Monfortino in particular is a reference point wine in the region, a standard among which all other wines are measured, both modern and traditional. Simply put, these are reference-point wines for the region that no one who loves Barolo will want to be without. The only problem consumers are likely to face is one of allocation of resources, as Conterno has a range of exceptional wines from recent vintages on the market today. While not inexpensive, the quality of these wines is extraordinary, and I can't recommend them highly enough. In particular the 1999 Barolo Riserva Monfortino is not to be missed. “I've always believed 1999 is a truly great vintage, one that unites classical structure with ripeness, profound aromatics and power,” says Roberto Conterno. “Of course the wines will require some bottle age to come around, but these are magnificent Barolos that will be extremely long-lived. We had a very well-balanced growing season in 1999. We received a healthy amount of snow in the winter, which gave the vines some reserves of water. The spring was warm, but the temperatures remarkably consistent, so I didn't need to intervene much in the vineyard at all. We had a warm summer, but without excessive heat, and very even weather all the way through the fall. The harvest was fairly late. We began picking around October 16-17, so although not quite as late as 1996, when we harvested the nebbiolos on the 20th of October, it was still a fairly late harvest by today's standards. The vines were not overly productive so we only ended up dropping 30-35% of our fruit during the green harvests, as opposed to vintages like 2001 and 2004 which required more dramatic greenharvesting.”

The following wines were tasted at a class on Barolo and Barbaresco I led at Crush Wine and Spirits in mid-town Manhattan in February 2006. The evening provided a great opportunity to check in on a few new releases as well as taste some of the region's benchmark wines from nearly all of the most important vintages back to 1961.

Roberto Conterno rates 1999 tops among recent vintages, followed by 2001 and then 2000. "Nineteen ninety-nine is the most complex wine," he told me, "while the 2000 is a very elegant Barolo for earlier drinking. Two thousand one was an excellent vintage with a tendency toward overproduction," he went on, adding that by cutting a lot of grapes in August he was able to limit production to about 30 hectoliters per hectare. "The young 2001s are currently sterner than the relatively open 2000s," he noted. As I reported in Issue 105, the estate replaced its freisa and dolcetto with barbera and nebbiolo after the 2000 vintage, and now ages its barbera for 21 months in large casks (prior to the 2001 vintage, the barbera was bottled the summer after the harvest). But with that exception, Conterno pointed out, "nothing has changed in the vinification here, and there is never any clarification of the wines prior to bottling. "