Vietti Barbaresco ‘Masseria Roncaglie’ McKENZIE 5L 2019

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Grapes: 100% Nebbiolo

Winemaking: The grapes are harvested from vineyard located Treiso. The vineyard has a southern exposure with a mix of clay and limestone in the soil. During the alcoholic fermentation, the must will remain for approximately 3 weeks in open-top stainless-steel tanks. Daily délestages, punching downs and open-air pumping overs are actioned daily. The malolactic is done in barriques.

Aging: Big oak vats, barriques and steel tanks for a total of 2 and half years.

Description: garnet ruby colour, slight garnet hue, with intense aromas of ripe cherries with intricate complexities of minerals, tea leaves and rose petals. With firm, ripe tannins, crisp acidity and feminine and round structure, this Barbaresco shows incredible finesse with excellent balance, integration and a long, lingering finish.

For the First Time 3 New Wines

The Barbaresco Masseria (a trade name not a vineyard name) has been made many times. This is the first time it has been made with fruit from the fabled Roncaglie Cru. The Monvigliero was made with the help of Jeremy Seysses of Dujac, whole bunch expert, a technique often used in Verduno. The Cerquio is from a parcel acquired from Michele Chiarlo.

The Prologue

Luca & Elena have always stayed true to their convictions, and, history, acknowledging the wisdom of their family, and elder peers. While their Cru Barolos have brought them international fame, they have worked to protect patches of history for both their family and the region. Listen to Luca share his stories of retaining the Scarrone vineyard planted to Barbera when his father had planned to replant it to Nebbiolo, saving Arneis from being reconciled to a note in a wine book, and, more recently going back to Barbaresco, acquiring a parcel or Rabajà, and this becomes clear.

The drive for constant improvement continues with a parcel of Monvigliero now in the stables, whole bunch techniques are being applied with the help of Jeremy Seysses from Dujac. Meanwhile, Vietti started making Timorasso in 2018. Grapes for this white coming from vineyards located in Monleale in the Alessandria Province.

Vietti’s 2019s are off the charts. I can’t say I am totally surprised, as I have been following the wines for several years. At the same time, it is one thing to taste wines from barrel and another entirely to see the finished, bottled wines in front of you. I tasted each wine from two bottles, one opened two hours before my arrival and another opened when I arrived. This year, I preferred the opened bottles for most wines. From the first wine to the last, the 2019s possess tremendous depth and purity, along with the deep inflections of site that are what Barolo is all about. Readers who can find these wines should not hesitate, as they are truly magnificent.

Galloni

A Little About Vietti

Back in 2005, I spent some time at Vietti. Their winery sits in the castle atop Castiglione Falletto. It’s walls broken by slit windows for archers to defend the grounds. The escape tunnel leading from the castle to the plains below had been filled in only a few years prior to my visit. Somehow they’ve managed to modernise aspects of the winery carving into the rock without collapsing the ancient buildings surrounding it.

One of my earlier experience of Vietti was at the Australian Wine Research Institutes Advanced Wine Assessment Course. A blind bracket of 9 Nebbiolo’s was presented, Vietti’s Perbacco from 1998 and Brunate from 1996. The Brunate was superb. My notes from the tasting read “Very complex, great harmony, texture, rich, long, very together, perfumed, incredible layers and vibrancy.” The Perbacco excellent, particularly at 1/8th the price. “Great purity, balance, and poise. Supple with an excellent core of fruit and lovely floral notes.”

In many ways, little has changed. Perbacco, typically declassified Barolo, is the wine to crack while you’re waiting for your Barolo to mature!

Vietti intrigues me. Some of the best Barolo I have devoured have come from their winery. Watching the wines evolve over time, both the same vintage and across vintages has been fascinating. Modern technology at times pierced the tradition. Last year a vertical tasting going back to 1982 was fascinating. It again highlighted my growing consensus that the drinking window for good Barolo, from great years, starts at around 10 years and is right in the zone between 15 and 20 years.

Whilst Vietti have always produced more structured wines, the wines have always shown harmony and balance. The difficult 2011 year was perhaps a sign of a maturity and wisdom in the winemaking. They guided the fruit to a state of great harmony and balance in that year, pulling back on the structural elements to produce wines that were drinking superbly in late 2016.

In the last couple of years, I have devoured many more Vietti wines including a 1996 Villero Riserva and 1997 Rocche di Castiglione. Both would be in the top dozen Barolos I’ve every been lucky enough to devour!

Luca and Elenor’s wisdom has continued to build in the following years. Year after year the wines are getting better and better.

A couple of podcasts with the Vietti Crew

If you have some Italian there’s are a bit of fun too!

The 2019 Vintage

“Harvest ran from October 8 to 16, which is pretty typical for us,” Luca Currado explained at Vietti. “It was a nerve-wracking vintage, the kind of vintage that gives you a lot of grey hairs. We made a lot of decisions on pure instinct. Our longest macerations were on the Brunate (30 days) and Lazzarito (27 days). Still, we shortened macerations by about a week on the Brunate, Rocche and Villero because we did not want to extract any bitterness in the tannins.”

All the wines saw submerged cap maceration except the Monvigliero, where one of the two parcels did see submerged cap maceration while the other did not. Malolactic fermentation was done in cask, except for the Rocche, where the logistics of juggling casks of different sizes resulted in some of the wine doing the malolactic in neutral French oak.

Vintage reports from others to explore

Alessandro Masneghetti’s 2019 Barolo Vintage Report. Subscription required.

Where in the World is Vietti?

The Krause Family bought Vietti a couple of years back, leaving, Luca and the Family in full control of production, hence the name below. The winery based in Castiglione Falletto now has additional vineyard sources in Barolo with Monvigliero in Verduno in the very North of the Barolo region, Rabajà & Roncaglie in the Barbaresco, and, Timorasso plantings in the Colli Tortonesi, the most eastern part of Piedmont. In addition, they have plantings in the Roero and Asti (the Barbera d’Asti Tre Vigne is a cracker).

This 3D flyover is Epic covering each of the communes you can see just how varied and extreme the aspect of each vineyard is and how in the space of a few metres just how dramatically the change.