Another day at the “office”

Back in February, I spent a handful of days in the charmingly-imposing Italian town of Montefalco, as the U.S. media guest attending the anteprima showing of Sagrantino’s somewhat-troubled 2014 vintage.

Generally, the way that these things work is that we press-types get to sit around in beautiful locales tasting (and pontificating upon) the latest – and usually not-so-latest – vintages of a region, when we’re not attending dinners or visiting nearby producers, I mean. Just another day at the office…

After highlighting a handful of producers from that visit, I thought that I would wrap up the Sagrantino-related coverage here by sharing some of what I found to be among the more interesting wines that I encountered on that anteprima trip. Some of these wines will, in true 1WD form, be nigh-impossible to find, though most won’t; but think of this less as the brain-dump of tasting notes that it is, and more of an enthusiastic recommendation of some of Montefalco’s best producers.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I have what feels like ten billion wines to tell you about; and so, let’s get it started in here while the base keep runnin’ runnin’, and runnin’ runnin’…

Read the rest of this stuff »

Hey, remember when I waxed all dime-store-poetic about the longevity and power of Barbera reds from the relatively-new, tippy-top-of-the-Asti-area-quality-pyramid region of Nizza?

Well, I do.

Anyway, if you’re curious how the highest-end Piedmonte Barbera wines fare when they have upwards of a decade of aging under their labels, check out the latest video in my Barbera in the Glass series for MyNameIsBarbera.com.

This episode features the second portion of my tasting with Tenuta Olim Bauda head honcho Gianni Bertolino, in which we delve in-depth into a couple of older vintages of their Nizza wines, and I kind of have my mind blown and gesticulate wildly with my hands while I make funny faces trying to express how good those wines really are. It’s a quick watch, and definitely worth a viewing if you’re one of the true lovers of Monferrato wine (and if you’re not… what the actual f–k is wrong with you?!??).

Cheers!

You might have read about the venerable Tenuta Olim Bauda (and its head honcho, Gianni Bertolino) here before, as I’ve previously covered my gig promoting Italy’s incredible Monferrato region over at at MyNameIsBarbera.com. Back in December, the MNiB team had produced video of me getting the low-down from Bertolino on Nizza, the relatively new tippy-top of the Barbera DOCG quality pyramid.

Well, we’ve got some more vid from that session, this time covering the first part of my Nizza tasting with Bertolino, during which I get introduced to more recent vintages of the (quite excellent) stuff. You can jealously watch me gulping down some tasty Nizza reds int he embedded video below. Next up in the series will probably be the second half of that tasting, in which I get to drink older Nizza vintages to see if they live up to their age-ability hype.

Tough job, right?

Barbera in the Glass: Nizza Tasting #1

Cheers!

For the most recent installment of the Monferrato in the Glass series over at MyNameIsBarbera.com, we provide another deeper dive into the vinous wares of the region, once again with Bava‘s Paolo Bava.

Paolo introduces me to Piedmonte’s version of Red Dawn: Albarossa. Albarossa has a unique history, even by historical-embarrassment-of-riches Italian standards. It’s actually relatively new, and something that really only could have been conceived within the hilly borders of Piedmonte (you can read up a bit more on Albarossa’s storied past here).

After viewing the vid below, you’ll have a much better idea of why drinking this wine will make you want to pronounce Albarossa with a slow, voluptuous, sing-songy Italian accent.

AAAAHL-baaahhh-ROOOOWWWW-ssssaaaahhhhhhh…..

Cheers!