2008 Produttori del Barbaresco Riserva

The Produttori’s 2008 Barbaresco is simply fabulous. A sweet bouquet melds into expressive fruit in a Barbaresco that is exceptionally polished and refined. The 2008 boasts striking sweetness and inner perfume to match its understated, elegant personality. Quite frankly, the 2008 is very hard to resist today, as the tannins are quite polished. Unusually sweet, silky and refined, the 2008 will take the better part of a decade to show the full breadth of its pedigree. At $37, it is one of the very finest values in ageworthy wine from anywhere in the world. This is a magnificent showing from the Produttori and a great introduction to the 2008 harvest at this historic house. Anticipated maturity: 2018-2038. Produttori del Barbaresco, one of the world’s top cooperatives, has been making terrific wines for five decades. As good as the wines were in the past, my feeling was that at times the full potential of these sites – widely considered among the very best in Barbaresco – wasn’t being fully captured. The Produttori must have thought the same thing. Beginning in 2001, the Produttori began incentivizing their member growers to cultivate higher quality grapes. At the same time, the winery began a gradual process of rotating out their large 100-hectoliter casks and replacing them with smaller 50 and 75-hectoliter casks. The 2008 Riservas are the culmination of all of that work. I have been anxiously waiting to taste the Produttori’s 2008 Riservas since the end of that year’s harvest, when Managing Director Aldo Vacca told me the Riservas would almost certainly be bottled. Two recent tastings of the entire lineup were more than worth the wait. Simply put, these are the very best young Riservas I have ever tasted from the Produttori. The wines will require considerable patience, but they are stacked and packed with tremendous concentration of fruit allied to structure. It is a vintage Piedmont drinkers love to love, where the individual signatures of each terroir are clearly delineated. Best of all, the Riservas remain exceedingly fairly priced considering the quality of what is in the bottle. Congratulations to Aldo Vacca, longtime oenologist Gianni Testa and the entire team at Produttori del Barbaresco for this magnificent collection of 2008 Barbareschi. Importer: Vias Imports, New York, NY; tel. (212) 629-0200

(bottled in April of 2011): Good medium red. Aromas of cherry syrup, plum, mint and marzipan. Supple, rich and deep, with good verve to the flavors of red fruits and minerals. Nicely structured Barbaresco with a fine dusting of sweet tannins. This can be enjoyed now or held.

The 2008 Barbaresco shows off dark red fruit, menthol, licorice, minerals and tar. It is a relatively juicy, forward wine meant to be approachable young, which it certainly is, at least right now. Today the fruit is quite concentrated and powerful, while the structural elements are less evident. It will be interesting to see where the 2008 goes over the next few years, but today it appears to be less interesting than the 2006 and 2007. Then again, this is exactly what happens in cooler, more classic years. The top wines can be stratospheric, but the entry-level wines seldom are. The Produttori's Barbaresco is made from vineyards in Barbaresco and Neive.