Sex Love and Barolo–playing FMK with my favorites

Oh wow. I’m not sure how, but I got to stay/work-Barolo/Barbaresco-cation. For the Barolo Barbaresco World Opening 2022. And I got to rate the latest vintages. Perhaps it is fate. Like, I am madly in love with Barolo and Barbaresco. Both are Nebbiolo, but Barolo is a little more brash, in terms of tannins, and aged longer than Barbaresco. It only makes sense I’d get to spend three days with them. Me, Barolo and Barbaresco–there’s a threesome dream team.

Granted there are different tiers of love. Barolo is a lover, Barbaresco I’d marry. I don’t know that there is a B in the Piemonte I’d kill. If I were playing Fuck Marry Kill with the region. Certainly not Barbera d’Asti.

Playing FMK with wine. How did I get there? Enough about me.

I don’t have ONE wine that made me realize wine was magic, but a Damilano Lecinquevignes was the first wine that made me go bonkers for a Nebbiolo–like I DID NOT KNOW THAT WINE DID THAT. I also didn’t know what to expect from an orgasm until I had one. The problem with great wine and sex is now I have expectations.

Sex, love, and Barolo. You really can’t take them apart.

If you are not familiar, they are wines made in Piedmont, in northern Italy. They are 100% Nebbiolo. It’s a finicky grape. It is high in everything–acid, tannins, alcohol–and that is perhaps what makes it so intoxicating on so many levels.

The morning after the casual welcome soirée on the 73rd floor of the Intercontinental, we walked into a room with 204 bottles of the recently released vintages of Barolo (2018) and Barbaresco (2019), and four hours to make our way through, in whatever order we wanted (they had a crew of somms to bring us whichever wine on the list we pleased)as many or as few of the bottles as we wished, and ultimately rate the vintages. I made it through about 50 wines.

I’ve realized that the more wine I sample, even when spitting, the more pithy, asshole-ish, and absurd my notes become. Not that I’m necessarily liking wines tasted later less–I just am a little less buttoned up in how I describe them.

Interestingly…and I’m just saying…some of my favorites, like top three faves, were favored producers from prior tastings and (hello I’m brain damaged, I don’t remember every favorite Nebbiolo without going through old notes and yes I keep notes on nearly everything) surprise surprise were loved again. And they were ones that turned up on the other’s top picks.

I could go on about the rest of the press tour and maybe I should. There was a party at Universal Studios. There was a master class. There was Fontina cheese (and there always should be cheese). There was a big walk around tasting for the trade. And then there was the walk around for the public that me and my new wine besties played hooky from because we got invited to a Cote de Rosés party with models in Hollywood where we greedily sucked down rosé like the water it was, after three days of Nebbiolo.

I digress.

I’ll be real. Barolo and Barbaresco are nearly always great, particularly when they’ve had some time to grow into their tannic noses. But it’s those top…let’s just say top ten, just to be controversial (probably more), that are the wines that make you go hmmm…a happy hmmm. If I’m being real (which I think I just said I was) there is no Kill in Barolo/Barbaresco FMK. It’s more like Fuck Marry Kiss.

I’ll start with a producer I was excited about at the morning tasting, Ettore Germano, and it wasn’t until I talked to the winemaker himself at the walk-around the next day that I thought hmmmm, there’s something familiar in his face. I later realized I’d had dinner next to him at a sparkling wine event four years ago. That time, he was pouring a sparkling Nebbiolo rosé that knocked my socks off. So I was happy that his solid reds were solid. Beyond solid really. That man’s wines are art.

My next pick, according to my tasting cohorts, is supes controversh for building a VERY modern winery that looks like wine boxes stacked on each other in Barolo. I feel like Italians do art and fashion so well and so progressively, so it’s interesting they object to a lil’ fun architecture but whatever. L’Astemia Pentita is the name of the wine and her Barolo from the Cannubi vineyard comes in purple glass bottles which I’m guessing is also not so popular with the locals. And it is GOOD. In my top five. Energetic, bracing, and then there’s notes of pastilles. Great fun. And maybe it’s wrong but I do love a troublemaker so long as their product is delish.

And then we come to my old friend ( I wish) G.D. Vajra. I cherish their wine. The bottling I had was from Barolo Bricco delle Viole. My notes read “smells like white chocolate laced w/ flowers, much fresher palate, alert tannins but not annoying -fernet-laced. Complex, fascinating, heady. I do love them.

Go on and get yourself some Barolo. Grab yourself a Barbaresco. Have some nibbles on hand and have a ball. I did.

Pink Pussy ordered the next year but it is still tar and roses

Oh hey I reviewed 2011 here on the eve of the epic women’s march. I was fighting and ready to grab back proving that all us delicate lil’ pussies, could take a stand. And STILL we HAVE PERSISTED! And will keep doing so.

Unlike this bottle I bought and should have hung onto longer. I should have gotten one to try now and one for later. Even though it was still too soon, I cracked the:

2012 Damilano Lecinquevigne Barolo

This is…in all honesty I feel it needs less aging than 2011? Like I detect less of the “good bones” (high acid tannins and alcohol plus secondary flavors like anything funky pretty much) than 2011.

The roses are potent. But I dunno this is less potent and possibly maybe less complicated than 2011 which is sad. If only every year could be CRAAAZY.

But this is still pretty crazy. Interesting but not demented. Its complexity evolves as it sits in the glass.

Although the acid and tannins are standing the fuck up so maybe re-testing in a few years would be good. But kitty is impatient.

Pussy (me. meow!) still loves the tar and roses which are rampant in this bottle. I am not a plant person so the fact that the first thing I detect on this wine makes me think “holy roses and violets” says something. I do like tar. In wine. Although I used to smoke so maybe that is why it is easy for me to detect tar notes. And/or it is LA and the tar pits here are fun.

Tar and roses. Quintessential stereotypical Barolo for a reason yet this is a modern Barolo and much more immediately elegant and silky than a kickass old-school one.

But stellar. Sometimes it is okay to be new.

Okay let us go metaphors. So it is the girl/guy you meet and think “they smell enticing”. But at first blush the personality is not there. But then you keep talking (wait for your glass to get some air) and you find they are fascinating. Which is to say once you pour this vino it will evolve with oxygen contact.

For you who are like “gimme the flavors breakdown woman!” A. don’t call me “woman” (I prefer Ellen) unless I give permission meow and

B. Ignoring that you called me “woman” I’ll tell you this is rife with violets, roses, potting soil, caramelized blueberries and blackberries.

BUT the tannins may distract you. Not the alcohol level. At 14 percent it is high but not burning.

The finish goes the hell on. For some time. Oh hey it’s still going as I type. IT PERSISTS! STILL! LIKE US!

Actually the finish is what makes me want to try this in a couple of years. I dare say I will. If I can secure a bottle. Although this is thoroughly drinkable right now.

This wine seems basic right off but then it evolves and you think “oh heck I am…Very Interested in learning more.

I’m gonna tell this wine my secrets. If I can GRAB another bottle. Back.

 

 

Pussy drinks Barolo. Kitty likes the tar and roses

I’d saved this bottle. I mean, 2011 Barolo…I could have hung on. But given the state of the union I cracked it open. As I write this I’m getting ready to go to the Los Angeles women’s march tomorrow morn. 

Hence pussy ears. 

Wuss wine can back the hell off.

This is a modern Barolo. Ready to sip now. Or…at least ready to sip six years post-vintage. I dare say earlier may have been too early.

2011 Damilano Lecinquevigne Barolo

You know how you make and new friend, and once you have both shared the stories of your messed up lives, think “I’m glad I met you now because we would have HATED each other but now we are gonna be besties”? 

I mean maybe you never thought that but with Nebbiolo you are generally glad you met it once it had gone through it’s rough stage. 

And modern Barolo, rife with the vanilla oak of the modern makers, went through its “rough stage” more quickly than classic Barolo.

This one is friendly. It says:

Roses! Berries! Tar! Tannins so mellow and lilting you take them in and decide to give them a hug!

As a wine person I embrace tannins fyi if you are not necessarily a wine person you may wait another few years to drink this.

But then. Oh then. 

We have flowers and I swoon. Roses.

And we have tar.

And hell if nothing else moves me it is prehistoric gook that bubbles out of the ground in our own La Brea tar pits, it is VIOLETS in a glass. 

Dang, drink this modern shit. Classic Barolo is brilliant and I love it for what it is but Damilano is On Point. 

Now that I’m fortified I’m getting some zzz’s then am off to grab back.

The test

At 9 am last Saturday I was pretending I was back in high school as I sat anxiously with my sharpened number 2 pencil. It was time for the WSET 2 test. Multiple choice. There is not a blind tasting until level 3. Phew. But this test was covering a lot. Beyond the wine stuff I will expound on there were also questions about spirits and stuff like eiswine, sherry and port.

I had studied like a crazy woman. I think I passed. I wonder how well.

My classmates I discussed it with agreed the exam was trickier than we surmised.

And not just because it required remembering that Barolo is from the Piedmont (extra fun facts I DID easily remember: it is made from the Nebbiolo grape, and high in tannins, alcohol and acidity). And I was SO happy I drilled the Aussie wines over and over. I almost never drink Australian sippers seeing as I reside here in sunny California which has some pretty plush stuff to offer. I just don’t see them around.

Even though I do have the guilty pleasure of sucking down those plush, berry and mocha-filled Shiraz’s straight outta Barossa. Or McLaren Valley. Or Hunter Valley.

But I was glad I drilled the Aussie wines because I needed to remember that Pinot Noir thrived both in the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula. A tricky question because good pinot noir, AKA the delicate flower of a dainty grape we do not associate with a land that creates those dense and spectacular Shiraz bombs, is in fact made there with skillzzzzzz. Like Shiraz. Australia makes damn fine wine.

ANYwho. There were also a lot of questions that would, say, ask what grape varieties are allowed in whatever region’s wines, list grapes 1 through 4 then ask you is it a) grapes 1 and 2, b)grapes 3 and 4, c) grapes 1 and 4, or c) grape 1 only. So you’d be sure of most of the grapes but fuck it number 4———is Viognier allowed in this blend or no?

Does ANY of this shit matter?

Probably not. Wine does not ACTUALLY matter.

Actually nothing in life ACTUALLY matters.

But in standardized tests only perfection matters.

To Virgos like me.

Study people, you’ll go far.