Our take on the 2018 Barolo vintage…
Earlier this month, we traveled to our favorite wine region, Piemonte. While there, we tasted a great deal of Barolo, many of which were from the 2018 vintage.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting about each producer we visited, and their incredible wines. Posts will follow our usual format, including background information on the producer, and our tasting notes. However, with our day jobs, it sometimes takes us longer than we’d like to compose these articles, and we wanted to immediately address the negative stigma that’s somehow quickly becoming attached to the 2018 Barolo vintage, a vintage which we enjoy very much.
If you’re a Barolo lover like us, you’ve likely seen some negative press about the vintage. Well respected and extraordinarily talented producers, whose wines have been praised by critics for years, received some scores and comments which are not in line with what they’ve received historically, even during challenging vintages. In our opinion, these low scores and negative tasting notes, are unwarranted, untrue, and do not accurately represent these wines or the vintage.
Here are our thoughts…
Elegant and approachable. This is not a lesser vintage…
For us, the wines we tasted from the 2018 vintage are a classic representation of Barolo. All of the textbook Nebbiolo sensations that any Barolo lover would appreciate are all there. These wines demonstrate elegance and finesse, they’re extremely approachable, but also display excellent structure, complexity, depth, balance, and are a beautiful representation of their respective terroir.
Often times when people hear that a Barolo is “elegant” or “approachable” they assume that it lacks the complexity, rich flavors and aromas, or overall character that a bolder vintage can demonstrate. They assume the wine may be watered down, diluted, weak, or uncharacteristic of the producer or the vineyard site. In regard to the 2018 Barolo that we tried, we assure you these assumptions could not be further from the truth.
A wine you can enjoy today, and for many years to come…
The 2018 Barolo are some of the most enjoyable and approachable Barolo that we’ve tasted upon release from any vintage. These wines display beautiful elegance and finesse, but are still capable of lengthy cellaring. Often times when people hear that a wine is “approachable” upon release, they assume the wine must be consumed now, and that it isn’t capable of cellaring. This simply isn’t true. The 2018 Barolo we tasted, we’re confident will age gracefully, develop beautiful complexity, and drink magnificently for decades to come. Every single producer we spoke to on this subject was in complete agreement with us.
Longer cellaring potential appears to dictate higher Barolo scores…
The vast majority of people, even those who’re very much interested in Barolo, don’t have the time, physical space, or available funds to cellar wine for several years, let alone decades. Therefore, most of the time, people are drinking their wines younger than whatever their ideal, subjective peak drinking window may be. Generally, this is shortly after a wine is released to the market. If this is true for you, and you aren’t cellaring your Barolo, there’s a good chance you’ll find many of the 2018s to be more enjoyable for consumption today versus their higher scoring counterparts from previous years. If you are cellaring your Barolo, it’s worth noting that it can still be extremely enjoyable to open a younger bottle, when it’s showing as gorgeous as some of the 2018s are. For us, as enjoyable as it is to drink a wine at its peak, sometimes it’s nice to drink a younger wine. This is not to say that these wines won’t age beautifully. However, it’s possible that they may reach maturity faster than Barolo from years such as 13’ or 16’ for example. We don’t think that this is a bad thing, and we don’t think that this is criteria that Barolo should be evaluated on. Sometimes it’s nice to enjoy a wine that’s perfectly mature, and showing beautifully after 10 or 15 years, for example, rather than having to wait 2 or 3 decades.
Power and austerity appear to be one of the driving forces behind some higher Barolo scores…
When you look at vintages that were widely praised by critics like 13’ or 16’, these are vintages which produced wines that although magnificent require some time and patience to be enjoyed at their full potential. There’s no denying the countless number of 13’ and 16’ Barolo that are absolutely incredible, and these vintages deserve all the praise that they’ve received and continue to receive. Many Barolo from 13’ and 16’ are some of our favorite Barolo that we’ve tried from any vintage. However, in our opinion, nearly every 18’ we tried, we found to be far more approachable and enjoyable to drink upon release compared to their higher scoring counterparts from previous vintages at release. Not to get totally off topic, but the same holds true for 2017, another vintage which received some criticism, albeit, not as much as 2018. When we visited Piemonte in September, we found the 17’s that we tried to be more enjoyable and approachable to drink at that moment compared to their 16’ counterparts. In our opinion, vintages like 13’ or 16’ can be austere in their youth, and can require several years to reach the approachability and enjoyment level of their 17’ or 18’ counterparts, and potentially decades to reach their true magnificent potential. Every producer we spoke to about this subject was in complete agreement. Barolo which are approachable in their youth, and which do not demonstrate the austerity of bold vintages like 13’ or 16’ shouldn’t be penalized. It’s almost as though vintages like 13’ or 16’ have become the benchmark for scoring Barolo, and anything that is different from this is “wrong” or “bad”, this shouldn’t be the case.
2018 should be celebrated and not criticized…
2018 is different from 2017, 2016, 2015, and so on, and that’s great, it should be different, if we wanted something that tasted the same year after year we’d drink Coca-Cola. If the producers of Piemonte thought that eliminating variability between vintages was the key to producing great Barolo, they’d have a team of scientists working on it right now, however, thankfully that’s not the case. If every vintage were identical, even if it were a great vintage, the world of wine would be a very boring place. Vintages like 2018 give Barolo lovers like us the ability to enjoy these wines immensely immediately upon release, as well as for years to come. This isn’t something you can say about many vintages. This is an amazing vintage. We can’t emphasize enough how great the 2018s that we tasted are.
We encourage you to go out and buy your favorite producer’s 2018 Barolo…
If you love Barolo as much as we do, you owe it to yourself to try these wines. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting about each of the amazing producers we visited, and we strongly encourage you to try their wines, because they’re truly incredible. However, in the meantime, if you have a favorite producer who consistently year after year produces Barolo that you love, please, please, please try their wines, we’re fairly confident you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Please stay tuned for our posts in the coming weeks.
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