1978 Barolo Monprivato

This incredible tasting of Barolos from Giuseppe Mascarello - originally conceived as a survey of the Michet clone of Nebbiolo - spanned five decades going back to 1967, and included a number of benchmark wines such as the 1970, 1982, 1985, 1989 and 1990 Monprivatos plus a complete vertical of the estate's Barolo Riserva Monprivato Cà d'Morissio. Virtually all of the older vintages were shipped over from the estate, which made this afternoon quite special, as provenance was unparalleled. Proprietor Mauro Mascarello and his son Giuseppe were on hand to lend their commentary to a group of Barolo aficionados that included sommeliers from a number of New York City's very finest restaurants.

Mascarello's Barolo Monprivato remains largely an insider's wine. Oddly, that wasn't always the case. Twenty years ago, Monprivato was widely considered one of Piedmont's most prestigious Barolos, and commanded a price to match. In the mid-1980s and early 1990s the modernist movement began to sweep through Barolo, bringing with it considerable attention to a group of passionate young producers who challenged many of the long-standing assumptions on how Barolo should be made, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. The modern-style Barolos were exuberant, flashy wines that attracted a new generation of wine lovers and in so doing created more buzz and sheer excitement than Piedmont had ever experienced. Sadly, the accolades these Barolos received came at great expense to the wines of more traditional producers rather than being viewed simply as different and equally valid expressions of the multi-faceted Nebbiolo grape.

Barolo (and Barbaresco, too) was in the midst of nothing less than a revolution. To be sure, some of the traditionally-minded wineries needed a wake-up call; their yields were too high, the barrels often dirty and the cellars unkempt, all of which were reflected in wines of uneven quality. A handful of estates though, including Mascarello, lost an enormous amount of visibility despite boasting a decades-long track record of exceptional wines.

Today, modern and traditional styles have largely converged as producers learned to take the best from both approaches. Along the way Mauro Mascarello continued to make noteworthy Barolos in a rigorously traditional fashion and, as a result, Piedmont fans are rediscovering this once-neglected property. Even though the Mascarello winery went through a period of obscurity, I always find it fascinating that the current generation of younger producers often speaks with great respect and reverence about Giuseppe Mascarello, the man and winemaker. Pricing has moved slightly over the years such that until very recently Monprivato was arguably the most undervalued Barolo among the region's cellar worthy, iconic wines.

I have long been a fan of Mascarello's 1970 Barolo Monprivato. It is one of the greatest wines ever made…in any region. I was completely blown away when I first tasted the wine a number of years ago. Still youthful at nearly 40 years of age, it remains a true monument to the glories of Piedmont and Nebbiolo. As it turns out the 1970 Barolo Monprivato was the genesis of this tasting because it represents an inflection point in the history of the Mascarello winery. [insert Mascarello 2] The first Barolo Mauro Mascarello made at his family's winery was the 1967, another wine that is legendary. Mascarello crafted the 1967 Barolo just as his father had done before him, blending fruit sourced from three vineyards; Monprivato, Villero and Bussia Soprana. The conventional wisdom at the time held that the most complete and complex Barolos were those that combined elements from various sites. Some vineyards were known for their aromatics, others for their fruit and yet other plots were highly regarded for the structural elements they imparted on the wines. But Mascarello yearned for something more. He wanted to make a single-vineyard Barolo, and he thought his Monprivato vineyard was that rare site that could express all of the facets of Nebbiolo on its own.

It took a few years of convincing, but Giuseppe Mascarello finally relented and let his son Mauro make a single-vineyard Barolo in 1970. He also gave Mauro a very valuable piece of advice in directing him to the very best fruit in the Monprivato vineyard. If Mauro was hell-bent on making this wine, Mascarello senior reasoned, he might as well use the parcel in the heart of the vineyard planted with the rare Michet clone, which was known to yield wines of extraordinary power, richness and longevity.

Michet, believed by some observers to be a diseased strain of the more common Lampia clone, is naturally low-yielding and late to ripen, because of the genetic mutations it carries. Mauro Mascarello's grandfather, Maurizio, planted the first Michet clones in his Monprivato vineyard in 1922. A second parcel of Michet was planted by Giuseppe Mascarello in 1963 using the best-performing plants from the original plot, a process known as selezione massale. Mauro Mascarello himself planted the third and fourth selections later, in 1988 and 1994 respectively.

Neither Mascarello could have ever predicted how successful Mauro would be. The 1970 Barolo Monprivato turned out to be the archetype for two wines; the modern-day single-vineyard Barolo Monprivato as well as the 100% Michet Barolo Monprivato Riserva Cà d'Morissio, a wine Mascarello finally produced in 1993 after 23 years of research that in reality dates back to vines his grandfather first planted more than 70 years before. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, after 1970 the Michet-only Monprivato was not made again until 1993. This tasting covered all of the Michet Monprivatos plus a number of other reference-point Barolos, just to round out the line-up.

Today, Mascarello typically harvests his Nebbiolo in the second half of October. Fermentation and maceration are carried out with indigenous yeasts and last about three weeks. The wines are aged in cask for roughly three and half years (for the Monprivato) to four and half years (for the Cà d'Morissio). Mascarello only makes the Cà d'Morissio when he feels the wine is sufficiently different from his Monprivato to warrant a separate selection, a decision he typically takes just prior to preparing the wines for bottling. So far five vintages of Cà d'Morissio have been released; 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 2001. The 2003 will be released in 2010, followed by the 2004. There will be no 2005 Cà d'Morissio.

This wine was tasted at the Second Annual Truffle Charity Dinner in December 2008.

1978 in Piedmont remains one of the most historic vintages in the world the world of fine, collectible wine. Even today, at thirty years of age, well-preserved bottles remain positively youthful, with plenty of life ahead of them. Yet virtually no one could have ever imagined the harvest would turn out as it eventually did. An irregular bud break that year acted as nature's version of a green harvest. The plants carried very little fruit into a summer that was especially cool, even by the standards of the time. Needless to say, early prospects were not encouraging. Then, miraculously, the region saw a month of intense, uninterrupted sunshine and heat beginning in early September that allowed the fruit to ripen perfectly. The hot daytime temperatures were balanced by cool nights, just the type of weather Nebbiolo thrives in. Because yields were low, all of the energy the plants received was channeled into a tiny amount of fruit. At harvest time the grapes were thick-skinned and contained relatively little juice. The wines showed intense color, expressive aromatics and ripe fruit, buffered by imposing tannins. Incredibly, these are qualities the wines still have today!

Usually tastings like these tend to focus on the icon wines of the vintage, which I suppose is natural. As much as I love drinking those bottles, I especially enjoyed this dinner as we had a few top-tier wines mixed in with lesser known bottlings. Everyone at the table was impressed by the strong showing of the wines, especially those we expected the least from. Readers who want to learn more about the vintage might like to take a look at Vintage Retrospective: The 1978 Barolos and Barbarescos, and A Memorable Evening of Barolo and Barbaresco: 1978 – 1990, as well as the vinous.com database, which contains recent notes on over thirty wines from the vintage. I would like to thank Marty Neschis for organizing this fun, informal tasting at Pepolino, a popular Manhattan restaurant.

This wine was tasted as a part of Festa di Barolo 2008.

For most observers 1978 occupies a hallowed place among the legendary vintages in Piedmont. From a purely historical perspective 1978 is also a fascinating vintage to study because it is the last important vintage in which the wines were largely made with traditional methods, both in the vineyards and in the cellar. These wines pre-date the arrival of the more modern style of winemaking which in the 1980s would begin to change the way many estates vinified and aged their wines. A recent dinner in New York with a group of die-hard Nebbiolo fanatics provided a great opportunity to re-visit many of the vintage's benchmark wines. As often happens, extraordinary vintages are the result of unpredictable and unexpected climactic conditions. “1978 was a very strange year,” says Mauro Mascarello. “The spring was quite damp, which resulted in a delayed and irregular flowering. The plants were carrying only about one-half of their normal amount of fruit. We basically had no summer, as the weather remained cool, rainy and foggy all the way through August. It really looked like it would be a terrible vintage. Then, all of a sudden, on the first of September the weather turned, and we had uninterrupted heat all the way through to October, with our harvest taking place in the second half of October.” The hot weather fully ripened the little fruit that remained and the naturally low yields gave some of the most concentrated, memorable wines ever made These 1978s show the extraordinary longevity that the best Barolos and Barbarescos offer. I was amazed at how youthful the wines were, an opinion shared by most, if not all, of the other tasters. Many wines displayed a lively, healthy color and appeared to be still full of life. Critics of traditionally made wines would say that the 1978s are an example of how these wines are never really ready to drink, and certainly the wines have required a great deal of patience. However, after having tasted more than twenty wines from this vintage over the last few months I can only conclude that the 1978s have proven to be well worth the effort of waiting. Well-stored bottles will provide the emotionally moving drinking experience that only a few of the world's great wines can offer. The wines were decanted several hours prior to serving and were tasted non-blind. While researching this article I had the opportunity to taste several other 1978s and also I include notes on those wines.

Mauro Mascarello Barolo Monprivato The Mascarello family impressive southwest-facing Monprivato vineyard in Castiglione Falletto has been producing some of the finest traditionally styled Barolos for the past 30 years. The Mascarello Monprivato, the first release of which was the 1970 (Mauro Mascarello took over from his father Giuseppe in 1967), offers a classic Barolo balance of structure and elegance. The young wines, with their sappy red fruit and floral perfume, frequently remind me of great Burgundies. A few vintages of the '90s are deceptively approachable in their youth, but history shows that the optimal drinking plane for the Barolo Monprivato is generally between 7 and 25 years after the harvest, with the more powerful vintages requiring a good 10 to 12 years to approach peak drinkability.The Mascarellos own just over six hectares of nebbiolo vines in Monprivato. (There is one other small owner of vines here, but the Mascarellos are the only producer to use the Monprivato name). The well-drained Monprivato hillside, which the late Renato Ratti ranked in the top category in his famous 1990 map of Barolo vineyards, lies at an altitude of about 280 meters and consists of chalk and clay marl. Mauro Mascarello, who looks younger than his 64 years, is clearly in love with this special site. From the mid-'80s through the mid-'90s he carried out an extensive improvement project, the objective of which was to produce more structured and complex wines without sacrificing elegance. He began the work with a one-hectare parcel at the southwest end of the vineyard, pulling up the old michet and lampia vines in 1985 and replacing them with "superselections" of the same two clones in 1988 following the construction of a drainage system in the vineyard and an elaborate soil redistribution project. The wine labelled Ca d'Morissio (the '93, reviewed in Issue 93, was the first release) comes from these vines.In '92, Mascarello uprooted another two hectares planted to the rose clone, and replaced these vines in '96 with the superselections of michet and lampia. The rose, Mascarello explains, contributes elegance and perfume, but offers little in the way of color or structure. Thus, beginning with the '93 vintage, the Monprivato bottling includes no rose.Over the same period, Mascarello has taken a number of steps in the vineyard and at harvest to improve fruit quality, including short pruning, green harvesting and stricter selection at the time of the harvest. Mascarello practices a traditional long but soft maceration, pumping over the must but not punching down the cap, in order to extract maximum varietal character from his nebbiolo fruit. Prior to 1995, vinification took place in cement vats, but since then it has occurred in temperature-controlled stainless steel. The wine is then aged in Slavonian ovals of 20 to 90 hectoliters. Resisting the trend toward earlier bottling and sale of Barolo, Mascarello continues to bottle the Monprivato between three and a half and four years after the harvest (the '97 was scheduled to be bottled in September.)I tasted the following series of vintages with the Mascarello family last fall at their home and winery in the town of Monchiero, located several miles to the southwest of Castiglione Falletto, along the Tanaro River. (Mauro's son Giuseppe-actually the third Giuseppe, including the original founder of the estate-has worked with his father since 1994.)