2017 Barbaresco Riserva Asili

Aldo Vacca and his team at the Produttori del Barbaresco cooperative continue to turn out gorgeous wines that deliver a remarkable combination of quality and value. This year's releases include the 2017 Riservas and the 2018 Barbaresco.

"Frost and drought were challenges in 2017, but not excessively so," Vacca told me. "It was an early harvest, but conditions at the end of the season were quite favorable. We were more worried about drought than heat. In the end, we found the requisites to make our Riservas, but production for all the wines is lower than normal. Two thousand eighteen is another story. Disease pressure was high throughout the year. There were some diurnal shifts at the end of the season, then a week where temperatures warmed, before cooling again. The wines lacked color and depth relative to stronger vintages."

In tasting, the 2017 Riservas are certainly very good wines. As often happens in warm years, the differences between vineyard sites are less marked than they are in cooler vintages, like 2014 and 2016. The tannins are also less polished. Time will help to some degree, but the wines will always show the personality of the vintage. Time on the skins was four weeks (as opposed to five for the 2016s) with submerged cap maceration at the end. Aging was done entirely in cask.