2009 Barolo Sarmassa

Despite Roberto Voerzio's tiny yields, which typically give him ripe nebbiolo grapes very early, he told me he was nowhere close to harvesting when I showed up for my tasting visit on September 23.Voerzio routinely cuts off the lower two-thirds of the clusters about three weeks before the harvest, but noted that he doesn't do much de-leafing, which protects the fruit against strong sunlight.Davide Voerzio, who told me he studied "at my father's school," prefers 2008 to both 2009 and 2010, but expressed the opinion that the 2009s, with their sound acidity and pHs, have "great class:it was really not too hot of a year."The 2009 harvest was finished here on September 25.

I have tasted Roberto and Davide Voerzio's 2009 Barolos a number of times over the last years, but it was my tasting last summer that was the most illuminating. I visited the estate in the summer, just a day or two before the wines were scheduled to be bottled. The wines were in tank, where they were naturally allowed to rise to the temperature most Barolo producers like for bottling, which is warmer than is ideal for tasting. Under these far less than perfect conditions, it would have been normal for wines as rich as these from a warm vintage like 2009 to be slightly flabby and unfocused. But they weren't. The wines were magnificent. From bottle, of course, they are even better. Roberto Voerzio likes warmer years and his wines often seem best suited to these types of vintages. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I do know the 2009s here have always been magnificent. Beginning in 2008, the Voerzio Barolos are aged roughly half in cask and half in French oak barrels with the exception of the Sarmassa and Capalot, which are raised exclusively in barrique becasue of their tiny production levels.