New releases Piedmont Nebbiolo

2018 was a bounceback year in Barolo following the difficult, hot year before. The harvest went well overall, and wines will be good for mid-term enjoyment. There's consistent quality from Barbaresco in 2019, and we can also recommend top Riserva wines from Barbaresco 2017 and Barolo 2016, taking a broader look, too, at recent-release Nebbiolo wines from other Piedmont denominations

- ALDO FIORDELLI

You might 'doff your cap' to someone as a sign of respect. In the winery, a winemaker might choose to plunge the cap' that forms on the top of a tank of fermenting wine in order to help extract more of the tannins in the grapes. For Nebbiolo, balancing its naturally high tannins is critical to achieving a harmonious wine, and in Piedmont's very dry growing season of 2017, hard tannins became a challenge, so the submerged cap technique was mostly excluded. In 2018, however, this maceration method made a return - and this can be taken as a sign of good quality and a good vintage for Barolo and Barbaresco.

In the 1990s, producers in the Langhe would have been offended if someone defined their Nebbiolo wines as 'elegant'. But after tasting through many 2018 samples during the Nebbiolo Prima event in Alba earlier this year, the wines seem to be more elegant than they are powerful; definitely not austere, yet very tasty, with sweet tannins and - from sites with the best expositions - good concentration.

Rarely ungainly, these are more often than not enticing wines. The Barolo 2018s are more concentrated than the Barbaresco 2018s, which are typically released a year sooner and very delicious at MGA level (menzione geografica aggiuntiva: a delimited single-vineyard site, more or less equivalent to a 'climat' in France).

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