1999 Barolo Cannubi Boschis

The 1999 Barolos are the first wines Luciano Sandrone made in his current winery in the flats of Barolo across the road from Cannubi. Since then, Sandrone has continued to ratchet up quality in a meaningful way. Although the 1999s are beautiful, it is pretty clear that today's wines have an extra gear or two. In the late 1990s, the emphasis was on very low yields and later harvesting, than is the case today, while new oak levels were also higher.

“I think 1999 was overlooked because people first started tasting the wines during a period in which there was a lot of geopolitical uncertainty [Editors Note: after 9/11] and markets were depressed. People just weren't interested in talking about the wines. It didn't help that the wines were hard to understand when young and that we had the much more open 2000s in our cellars. Although the vintage was largely ignored at the time, today consumers who own the wines should be quite pleased,” says Luciano Sandrone. “From a climactic perspective we had ideal conditions. Many people mistakenly think that the summer is the critical period of the year, but it is actually the last month of the growing season that determines the quality of the vintage, so long as there haven't been any dramatic weather events such as hail earlier in the year. It was hot during the days, but never too hot, and we had cool evenings which allowed for a gradual ripening of the fruit, which is so essential in preserving the aromatic qualities of Nebbiolo. It was a long harvest, which we conducted in mid- to late-October, in stark contrast to the preceding 1997 and 1998 harvests, both of which were much earlier. In 1999 our plants were not especially productive so we didn't have to green harvest as much as usual to get to our desired yields of 50-55 quintals per hectare. My 1999s are more potent than my 2001s, although you would hardly know that from the technical analyses- the figures are virtually identical. It's really more of a tactile sensation on the palate. The 1999s have more potent tannins while the 2001s have softer, more elegant tannins. The classicism of the wines is felt in their power and structure.” “Our alcoholic fermentation was carried out with indigenous yeasts at 28-32 ̊C (82-90 ̊F) for roughly 6-8 ays. When we had about 40/50 grams per liter of sugar left in the must we separated the press juice from the must and completed the alcoholic fermentation at a lower temperature of 20-24 ̊C (68-75 ̊F) which helped us maintain freshness in the finished wine. The wines were then racked into tonneaux for the malolactic fermentations which were finished by the end of the year. As is our practice we vinified the fruit from our three parcels at Cannubi Boschis separately and the wines were blended the year after the harvest, while the fruit from the parcels we use for Le Vigne were also vinified separately but in this case we blended the wines about 6 months prior to bottling. In 1999 both Barolos spent a total of 30 months in oak.” Unfortunately 2002 is a tough vintage for Sandrone. There will be no Cannubi Boschis and there are only 4,000 bottles of Le Vigne, which in this vintage incorporates only two of the four vineyards that typically make up the blend- Ceretta in Serralunga, and Conterni in Monforte. Neither of these two sites were affected by hail and Sandrone did a strict selection in the vineyards to select the best fruit possible. A further selection was made of the finished wines in the cellar, and only the best barrels went into the final blend. “We did the best we could in 2002. “We had double the amount of rain we usually have and very little heat during the summer,” explains Sandrone. “Our fermentation times were slightly shorter for Ceretta and slightly longer for Conterni. We kept the wines in oak 24 months rather than the more typical 30, and bottled earlier than normal in order to preserve as much freshness as possible.” Like the other producers who have released a Barolo in 2002 Sandrone is convinced that the wines will offer positive surprises down the road. It will be interesting to find out.

From his first vintage in 1978 Luciano Sandrone set out to make a more approachable and drinkable Barolo. No one has managed to bridge tradition and innovation as brilliantly as Sandrone, rendering pointless any of the typical arguments in favor of one winemaking philosophy versus the other. Over the years Sandrone has turned out a stunning group of wines, often reaching stratospheric heights. Although Sandrone's wines are accessible when young, they also age beautifully as is demonstrated by the wines from the 1980s. Yet as magical as the older wines can be, Sandrone believes his recent releases are even better, saying “today we know so much more about how to work in the vineyards and in the cellar.” I consider Luciano Sandrone's Cannubi Boschis to be one of a handful of benchmark wines for the region, well worth the effort of finding and cellaring.

Sandrone is one the most meticulous producers I have ever met. He tends to his vineyards and winery with extraordinary passion and precision. Sandrone's plots are in the Cannubi Boschis (also known as Monghisolfo) vineyard, a seven hectare stretch that lies on the same hillside as Cannubi. As I wrote in Issue 2, the estate's holdings are divided into three sub-plots which have slightly different characteristics, and are therefore harvested and vinified separately. The mostly south-facing plots and this producer's preference for very low yields result in rich, concentrated wines that represent contemporary Barolo at its very best.

In hot vintages, Sandrone's Barolo drinks well upon release, while in fresher vintages this Barolo seems to start hitting its stride around age 10. In general, I find the wines from the more classic vintages show greater complexity in both the aromas and flavors, as well as possessing more length, freshness, and better overall balance. One of the interesting aspects of doing a vertical like this is observing which wines keep the attention of tasters more than others. While wines like the 1997 and 2000 are no doubt beautiful, they are also wines of less complexity that can be understood immediately, with a minimum of fuss. The 1996, 1999, and 2001 are great wines because they show much more precision and delineation in the flavors, along with significant evolution in the glass, which invites you to come back to the wines time and again. Sandrone adds “I tend to prefer the fresher, classic vintages because the wines have much more typicity of Nebbiolo, although I do prefer my 1990 to the 1989.”

In his spacious new vinification facility outside the town of Barolo, Sandrone racks his nebbiolo off its skins very quickly after the fermentation in vertical steel tanks has finished, and the wines go into barrel by gravity. (Incidentally, Sandrone told me he has never used rotofermenters, as he finds this approach "too technological, too fast.") Although Sandrone employs barriques for his barbera and basic nebbiolo, the Barolos are aged mostly in 400- to 500-liter French oak barrels, about 20% of which are new each year, with barriques used only for experimentation or to store wine needed to top the larger barrels.Sandrone told me that 2000 featured hot summer weather, then warm nighttime temperatures in the weeks leading up to the harvest. The result, he said, was very ripe, low-acid wines with smooth tannins and high alcohol (in the 14.8% range, higher than that of '99 and '98), a bit like the '97s. In contrast, 1998 saw longer, slower ripening, thanks to more variation between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and Sandrone feels that these wines likewise will take a long time to mature. "Nineteen ninety-nine," Sandrone went on, "is a strong vintage but a bit different from the rest of the recent years: very red fruit in style, very pinot-like, very Burgundian. My '98s are more traditional."Interestingly, Sandrone is seriously considering bucking the trend toward vineyard-designated bottlings and going back to offering just one Barolo. "It's not an economic issue," he explained. "It's just that the old tradition was to assemble numerous parcels. Also, today people know and ask for our Cannubi Boschis, but we don't produce enough of this wine to satisfy demand. We're forced to raise the price of Cannubi so that we have enough to go around. Anyway, this is just an idea now: our most important aim would be to achieve more complex wines. For example, I believe that Cannubi would complete Le Vigne."