Due Nebbioli I Didn't Like

Regular readers will have deduced by now that I feel a particular affinity toward the wines of Piedmont, in particular to the many regional iterations of Nebbiolo. I like Nebbiolo, too, when grown in the precarious, high altitude area of Valtellina, nestled near the Swiss Alps in northern Lombardy. Yet sometimes I do drink wines from both regions that I don’t like. I just don’t write about them as often as the wines I do enjoy. Sometimes, though, you can learn just as much if not more about someone’s tastes by what they don’t like as compared to what they do.


Sometimes, there’s the wine I’ll buy in hopes of liking it….

Rosso di Valtellina, Sandro Fay 2005. $13.50. 12% alcohol. Synthetic. Importer: Omniwines, Linden Hill, NY.
Nebbiolo is an incredibly finicky vine. It requires perfectly selected vineyard sites if it’s to ripen adequately and provide wine of any real character. Piedmont and Lombardy seem to be the only two regions on the globe where that happens with any consistency. It’s also temperamental, both in the vineyard and the cellar; a vine and wine that requires much care and attention from the farmer and winemaker. In all of these respects, it shares much in common with Pinot Noir, particularly as cultivated in Burgundy. And much like red Burgundy, especially in today’s marketplace, the idea of a varietal Nebbiolo selling for under $15 seems too good to be true. Yet my hope that such a wine might surprise just had to be explored.

I don’t think my expectations were too high. This is meant to be a simple wine, a relatively everyday expression of Nebbiolo (actually, it’s about 90% Nebbiolo blended with other local vines and a smidgen of Merlot). And I found it simple – simple to a fault that is. There was nothing technically flawed about it. It’s just that it left me completely flat, flat being a word that pretty well sums up its qualities in the glass – muted fruit and aromas with little in the way of liveliness. It’s quaffable enough; heck, it even held up pretty well over the course of three days. I won’t rule out trying it again. In fact, I probably will, in hopes that my first impressions might be proven wrong. It’s just that this bottle didn’t move me. And I want to be moved, at least a little, by any wine I drink, no matter the price point.

Then sometimes, there’s the wine I’ll buy in spite of expecting not to like it….

Call it a reality check, if you will. Or call it the antithesis of open minded or blind tasting. I suppose it’s both.

Langhe Nebbiolo “Vigneto Starderi,” La Spinetta 2004. $27.50. 14% alcohol. Cork. Importer: A Marc de Grazia Selection, Vin DiVino, Chicago, IL.
I think it’s fair to place La Spinetta at the extreme modernist end of the spectrum when it comes to Piemontese producers. The estate is represented in the US by Marc de Grazia, an importer who heavily influences the stylistic approaches used by the winemakers in his portfolio. While I don’t discount the possibility of perfectly lovely wines being made in the modern style (Elio and Gianluca Grasso’s Barolo “Runcot” comes immediately to mind), I do tend to prefer Nebbiolo – and wines in general – when the vineyard has more to say than does the winemaking.

Tasting La Spinetta’s Langhe Nebbiolo, I’m left with the distinct impression that I’m drinking made wine. Its richly hued garnet color is darker than I’d expect from Nebbiolo, especially from a young vine wine like this, even if from a good vintage. And while some of the classic Nebbiolo aromas – licorice, tar and raspberries – were present, there was also an aggressive element to the wine’s scents. Alcohol and paint both came to mind. In the mouth, the wine wasn’t just disjointed. It also felt over inflated, as if someone had started out with what might have been Grace Kelly but ended up producing something more like Pamela Anderson. Too much oak and too much extraction, with little in the way of finesse to balance out those top-heavy attributes.