Month: June 2019

2017 Piero Benevelli Langhe Rosso numero 3

If memory serves, tenuous but just possible, then this is the twins from Mondo Imports own dalliance with blending? 70% Barbera and 30% Nebbiolo combine seamlessly to make an extraordinarily delicious mouthful. Exquisitely balanced poise of floral perfume, brightest red fruit and cool Langhe mineral. Maybe the warmer year has pushed the Neb to be more friendly to the Barbera? Absolutely spotless and impossible to avoid another sip. Some wine demands unraveling and thought, some just need joyful drinking. This surely is the latter but as it’s Piemonte just a bit of the former? Bravissimo, D’Anna ragazzi, best one yet.

14% alcohol. Cork. $35 and a bargain.

93 points but plus for sheer lip smacking glee.

2010 Passopisciaro Sicilia IGT

From the edge of the Etna volcano where they clamber up and down tending their Nerello Mascalese vines. No enological slickness to this indeed. A medicinal tang from the less than scrupulously clean wood and a bit of lift but unusually tolerable. In fact they’re just the sort of blemish that make a French film star interestingly full of character rather than the blandness of a Hollywood performer. It’s probably the sheer strength of cherry rich and ethereally mineral fruit that that makes this normally grumpy fault zealot want another mouthful. What the Japanese call Wabi Sabi, imperfection being essential to beauty? Age seems to have melded fruit and structure but kept that beautifully dry tug to refresh. The wonky bits are really just seasoning. Hints of blood orange juice too. So good with a oily pasta, of course. Surprised to find this so delicious. The teetering balance of a lot of great fruit and a tiny bit of naughty.

14% alcohol. Cork. $50 approximately?

93 non technical points.

2016 Bruno Rocca Barbera d’Alba

Modernist, sweetly fruited and with a bit of lift to tickle the fancy. Very ripe, clean and crunchy cherries and plums but with just enough Langhe earthy stones and rocks to cut across. Slick and svelte but its roots still firmly in the Piemontese soil. Perhaps a bit more savouriness and austerity would be good. Nonetheless delicioso. The Bordeaux shaped bottle indicates the move away from rustic traditions perhaps? Bowl of tomato sauced pasta? Essential.

14.50% alcohol. Cork. $42.

91 points.

2009 Best’s Bin No. 1 Great Western Shiraz

A bottle of wine from the pile of cardboard boxes euphemistically called a cellar and made from fruit harvested in a hot dry year, its time had come. Rich blackberries and that camphor and old leather bottle development. Clean as an onsen bath and full of rich, black treacle fruit, it’s pulled back by some savoury, dusty earth. The tannin’s fallen back into the whole and it’s freshened by some acidity that’s just a bit too raucous for its own good, trying to shout over the warmth of the ethanol. Sure, you could say it’s a bit too engineered and warm but the blackberries and tar still speak of a warm, ancient and beautiful place. Don’t think you can enjoy wine properly without being a romantic hedonist. Go on, scoff.

14.50% alcohol. Screwcap. About $24 and not much more for the current release, under appreciated.

92 points.