2009 Giovanni Manzone Barolo Riserva Le Gramolere
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Tasting notes
Full bottle 1,289 g. Bottled to mark their 100th anniversary. Interesting that this 16-year-old wine is more tannic than their 2019 and 2020 Barolos. Climate or viticulture or winemaking? It's a wine that feels as if it's only just shifting into its groove, the tobacco-scented red fruit settling in the sharp and leaf-rustled fissures of tannins. The scent of chanterelles and lichen on ancient logs sighing and shifting into years and layers of leaves on leaves, green to red to gold to copper to brown to dark, dark, dark. To loam and underearth. Long and languid and saturated with life. It tastes like the dense, sweet, always-damp earth under our very old Victoria plum tree smells. (TC)
Critic scores
Average Score
Walter Speller, jancisrobinson.com
Tamlyn Currin, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
Monforte d’Alba. Maturing mid ruby with brickstone rim. A mature nose of cherry with hints of exotic spice and black-tea leaves. Clearly an aged wine but with no signs of decline, quite the opposite. Rich yet not heavy on the palate and showing only a few signs of age with leather notes, mature cherry and a hint of gingerbread. Lively tannins. Long and still not at its peak. (WS)
The winemaking team at the Giovanni Manzone estate tends to go a little heavy on the oak. Their 2009 Barolo Riserva Gramolere is a case in point. In this Riserva, the fruit versus oak integration is not perfect. There is too much emphasis on spice, clove and campfire ash. But this was a hot vintage, so you get plenty of dried blackberry and dark plum as well.
The 2009 Barolo Riserva Cento Anni is a wine Manzone is releasing in 2025 to commemorate their 100th anniversary. Black cherry, incense, new leather, tobacco, espresso and dried herbs saturate the palate. This dark, full-throttle Barolo hits the palate with tremendous punch. It strikes me as a wine from another era, given the strong oak imprint, but it has aged impeccably well and still has room to grow. That said, this is an outlier in this range from a stylistic standpoint. The 2009 spent 84 months in neutral oak followed by 60 months in cement prior to bottling.