1996 Barolo Riserva Vigna Rionda

This is a terrific set of wines from brothers Franco and Roberto Massolino. Tasting the wines today along some of the estate's more recent releases is a poignant reminder of how much more finessed today's Barolos are with respect to those of twenty years ago.

Franco and Roberto Massolino put together a remarkable tasting when I visited their small estate in Serralunga earlier this year. Massolino makes a number of outstanding wines but their flagship Barolo Riserva Vigna Rionda is particularly noteworthy. All 14 vintages of the Rionda were represented, including the legendary Barolo vintages of the last 20 years – 1982, 1985, 1989 and 1990 – as well as the more recent wines from the 1990s. As this tasting demonstrated, Massolino's Vigna Rionda is capable of developing extraordinary complexity in bottle. With the exception of the warmest, most precocious years, it is a wine that starts coming into its own around age ten, but that really blossoms between ages 15-20. Even with extended bottle age, it remains a classically structured Barolo with a firm tannic spine. One of the most fascinating aspects of a tasting like this is that provenance is completely removed from the equation. Because the bottles had never been moved, almost all the wines came across as youthful and fresh. The gently-sloping Vigna Rionda, which can be seen from the Massolino winery, is one of Barolo's most iconic vineyards. It was Bruno Giacosa who first made the site famous with his towering Barolos of the 1970s and 1980s. Massolino owns two adjacent plots in Vigna Rionda. The first piece of land was purchased in the early 1960s, the second in the mid-1980s. Like most other traditionally-minded estates, for many years Massolino produced a single Barolo made from a blend of their various holdings. The winery first bottled Vigna Rionda as a single-vineyard Barolo in 1982. The 1980s wines are very traditional in style and are also quite representative of their respective vintages. The 1990s have brought more elegance and finesse to the wines, but without sacrificing the house style.

Massolino's 2002s are among the best wines of the vintage. He is to my knowledge the only producer to vinify and bottle all of his single-vineyard wines. Although the Vigna Rionda was still in cask, I was able to taste the other wines from bottle. “So far we have been pleased with the response to our wines, and in the end we feel we made the right decision in bottling our single- vineyard Barolos,” says Franco Massolino. “There is no question it was a difficult vintage. We had some hail but luckily it stopped right at the entrance to the town. We have one small plot there that was damaged by hail, but otherwise our best vineyards were not affected. In 2002 it was necessary to work well in the vineyard. We dropped 50% of our fruit in order to give the grapes the best chance of maturing fully. We also waited until the very end of October to harvest so that the fruit would be as ripe as possible. We are quite happy with the results, obviously within the context of the vintage.” “1999 on the other hand is a very classic vintage. The summer was fairly hot, though not as hot as 2000. It was a bit on the dry side, and in our most south-facing plots the plants suffered slightly from the lack of water. We did get a little bit of hail damage which required manually trimming damaged grapes from some bunches. Overall it was not an especially productive vintage so we needed to do less green harvesting than in more abundant vintages such as 1998. It is an important vintage that produced age-worthy wines. In fact if I could sign up today to have my 2006s to turn out like these 1999s, I would do it in a heartbeat.” For the most part vinification here remains rooted to tradition. Fermentation and maceration times range from fifteen days for the Barolo normale and Margheria to 25 days for the Vigna Rionda, and all the wines are aged in cask. The exception is the Parafada, which in 1999 was produced in a decidedly more modern style, with a short fermentation followed by malolactic fermentation and aging in barrique.