1996 Barolo Villero

Following my tasting of current and upcoming releases with the Mascarello family, Mauro Mascarello staged a vertical tasting of his great Barolo Monprivato, covering all of the great vintages back to 1970; I'll publish the results of this impressive vertical in an upcoming issue. Among Mascarello current wines, I was especially taken with the quality of his new Ca d'Morissio bottling, from Monprivato vines replanted in 1988 with a selected clone of michet. Thanks to the very low crop levels, I would never have guessed that the recent vintages of this wine (it has been made in '93, '95, '96 and '97) were from young vines. Interestingly, Mascarello prefers '97 and '96 for nebbiolo; he feels that '98 and '99, perhaps due to the larger crop levels, were less powerful and dense and therefore more successful for barbera and dolcetto.

Mauro Mascarello recently completely a laborious 11-year project designed to improve the quality of wine coming from his great six hectare Monprivato vineyard in Castiglione Falletto. The objective of this undertaking was to produce more structured and complex wines without sacrificing elegance. He began 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 Mascarello alternatively refers to as Monprivato Cascina Mascarello or Monprivato Vigna Mascarello or simply Monprivato Riserva comes entirely from this plot, and was produced for the first time in 1993. As my notes below indicate, it appears to be a more seriously structured wine than the "regular" Monprivato without any loss of the vineyard ineffable perfume (both of these wines, with their sappy red berry and floral complexity, frequently remind me of great Burgundies). 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, says Mascarello, contributes elegance and perfume, but offers little in the way of color or structure. Thus, beginning with the '93 vintage, the basic Monprivato bottling includes no rose. I find these traditionally made Barolos to be quite tannic from barrel, but in strong vintages like '95, '96 and '97--and partly owing to the recent vineyard improvement program--the wines appear to have the flesh to support their structure.