1961 and 1967 Conterno

A group of six got together at Perbacco in San Francisco to sample some bottles of the 1961 and 1967 Conterno Barolo. We had sourced all wines from Rare Wines in Sonoma, and the '67 in particular may have had the same provenance as those offered by Zachys at about the same time (a cellar in Piemonte). All of the bottles were opened about 2 hours before dinner, with no decanting until immediately before being served, and transported with great care to the restaurant.

The 1961 Conterno Barolo showed quite well considering its advanced age (older than some of the participants in the tasting), with a high-toned, airy nose of slight faded musty dark fruit, saddle leather, and more distant notes of underbrush and soil. In the mouth this medium-bodied wine is more about nuance than power, with almost delicate notes of faded cherry and licorice nicely delineated on the palate. I might have used the descriptor "Burgundian" if this term was not so overused these days, but it does conjure up some of the complex, nuanced character of the wine. This wine held up nicely over the course of the dinner, not a stunner but certainly a fascinating example of a 47 year old Barolo.

Much more deeply pitched than the 1961 was our first bottle of the 1967 Conterno Barolo, which initially showed a slightly volatile nose of shoe polish and dark cherries. On the palate this wine showed a completely different level of concentration from the 1961, with bolder notes of licorice, meat, and dark fruit that extended over the entire mid-palate. Gradually the volatile notes subsided and the wine came beautifully in to overall balance, showing a strong, expressive character that became more energized with time, a remarkable elixir that lingered on the palate, as if vibrating at a resonance just below our collective ability to detect it. This bottle was in fine shape, even if perhaps slightly on the nether side of a very long and gradual slope of maturity.

The second bottle of 1967 Conterno Barolo did not show so well. The first tastes of the wine showed that it was at least broadly in the style of the first 1967, at least in terms of its level of concentration, but the wine was tired from the outset and continued to lose energy with time in the glass. A caramel note emerged quickly on the nose and the palate became more anonymous and subdued, with none of the bold sweeping palate character of the first. This bottle was clearly well over the hill, probably as a result of a cork that did not perform as well as the cork in the first bottle (assuming both bottles came from the same cellar and thus had the same provenance).

A great evening where the food and wine service at Perbacco really heightened our ability to evaluate and enjoy these wines. Not your everyday treat, that's for sure...