2010 Barolo Romirasco

Aldo Conterno's son Giacomo, offers a pretty detailed description of 2010; plenty of snow in the winter, rain during the spring and a slightly delayed flowering with a bit of hail in June set the stage for the final phase of the growing season, which is always the most critical. Temperatures increased quite a bit in late August and September and there was a bit of rain as harvest approached. The last weeks of the season were marked by sharp diurnal shifts, the conditions Nebbiolo seems to thrive in the most. As I have written previously, there have been plenty of developments at this historic estate over the last decade. Giacomo Conterno was quite candid in stating that his father did not get in the way of what his three sons wanted to with the estate; he let them make their own mistakes and find their own way, which, as a parent I find admirable. Since about 2004 yields are down and the wines are generally much more classic in style than they were in the 1990s. One of the major changes here has been with the Granbussia, where production is much lower than before, which gives Conterno the ability to release a pure Barolo Romirasco, something that used to happen only when there was no Granbussia. Today, in theory both Barolos can be made in the same vintage, as is the case in 2010. Another step in the evolution of Granbussia has been a sharp decrease in the amount of time the wine spends in steel tank prior to bottling, from two years down to 6-7 months, while time in cask has gone from about three years to nearly four. As for the 2010 Barolos, well, they are fabulous. The wines spent over six weeks on the skins and have a classic sense of austerity in their youth that Barolo lovers will adore.

According to Giacomo Conterno, 2009 was a winemaker's vintage in Barolo. "At the end of August we had huge differences in maturity within the same rows, worse than ever before," he told me. "Our strategy was to focus on the winners: we cut off all of the less advanced grapes. That enabled us to the pick the rest of our fruit ripe, and not too late." He went on: "Another choice was to pick in two passes. Some people bet on their green grapes and let them hang, but they never got ripe. So they ended up picking a combination of very ripe, high-alcohol, high-tannin grapes and underripe grapes. There are many unbalanced 2009s with high alcohol and green tannins." That last pass through the vines, which Conterno referred to as "Darwinian selection," resulted in yields well below 30 hectoliters per hectare. But Conterno noted that overall production here in general has been drastically reduced over the last decade, from 200,000 bottles prior to 2001 to about 80,000 today. Incidentally, the Conternos pulled up their old dolcetto vines in 2012 and may plant freisa in their place.