2010 Giacomo Conterno Barolo Cerretta

The 2010 Barolo Cerretta, here in its first vintage, is a wine of extreme beauty. Savory herbs, menthol, rose petal and anise are all woven together in the glass. Absolutely nothing is out of place in this deep, resonant, yet weightless Barolo. Today the 2010 is totally sensual in the glass. It's hard to know how the 2010 will age as there is no track record, but it looks like a 2010 Barolo that will deliver plenty of pleasure with just a few years in bottle and offer a wide window of fabulous drinking beyond that.

(from vines planted in 1993; Conterno purchased three prime hectares in this Serralunga cru in 2008): Good bright red. Knockout sweet aromas of smoke, minerals and dried flowers. Offers outstanding inner-mouth energy to its intense red fruit, smoke and mineral flavors, conveying great density without any obvious impression of weight. Finishes with big, subtle, building tannins and great perfumed persistence. Conterno told me that he vinified the clay and calcaire elements separately before blending the two components. Incidentally, after racking his Barolos three times in the first year, he does minimal racking thereafter and bottles without fining or filtration. He does less pumping over during the vinification of the Cerretta because he does not want to extract too much tannin. He may bottle this first release of the Cerretto entirely in magnums. (Incidentally, I also tasted a sample of the 2011 version of this wine. It showed a slightly liqueur-like quality to its fruit but was wonderfully fresh and youthful for the vintage, showing outstanding balance of fruit and tannins.)