2009 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo Brunate/Le Coste

The 2009 Barolo Brunate is one of the wines I am not totally crazy about. A slightly roasted character to the fruit and soft structure suggest the 2009 is going to offer its best drinking on the early side. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the wine held up well through to the end of the evening, by which time some of the over-ripe character had blown off. Even so, the 2009, while tasty, can’t match the other wines on the table.

(an 80/20 blend): Light-medium red. Exotic, slightly decadent, old-style aromas of roasted strawberry, truffley underbrush, tar and brown spices. Suave on entry, then creamy in the middle, with red cherry and strawberry flavors complicated by slightly funky but fascinating porcini and earth tones. Marta describes the Brunate-La Coste as "more austere, blacker wine" but this 2009 is atypically gentle in the early going, even if there's plenty of ripe tannins to support a leisurely evolution in bottle.

Dark cherries, plums, cloves, violets, incense, orange rind and tobacco meld together in the 2009 Barolo Brunate-Le Coste. A massive, powerful Barolo, the 2009 boasts stunning depth, power and richness, all in a relatively open style for this estate. I imagine the 2009 will drink well relatively early for top-flight Barolo, but it has fabulous class and intensity.