Barolo in the Mountains

August provided a rare alignment of the stars in which I found myself in the mountains of Colorado for work, mysteriously not all that far from Aspen and the Roaring Fork River valley. Fortune would have it that Rico Thompson was in the area and ready for some fly fishing, and maybe an after fishing tasting of wines from another distant mountain range. We met up on the Crystal River, a tributary of the Roaring Fork and tried our luck on a gorgeous day in the canyon lined with the Pennsylvanian age Maroon Formation. Two of us were fly fishing neophytes, and the results at the end of the day tended to reinforce this fact, but one could not fail to enjoy the turbulent, textured waters of the Crystal. The river was not easy to fish, and late in the day Rico found himself upside down in a large and fast moving pool. I myself chose to lean on a boulder that seemed much too large to move, but then found myself immersed as well (at least right side up).

For wines, we started at lunch with a couple of glasses of the 1996 Duval-Leroy Champagne Brut, which had been opened the night before. The straw yellow wine, despite lacking a bit of the fizz of a freshly opened bottle, showed the (successful) characteristics of the vintage, with powerful, bold, clearly etched flavors of great intensity, with just a touch of creaminess and sweetness to round out the edges. At dinner that night in Carbondale, we sampled two Barolo of different styles, the 1998 Giacosa Barolo Falletto di Serralunga (white label) and a1999 Sandrone Barolo le Vigne. While this seemed to be an opportunity to wax eloquent upon the differences between “traditional” and “modernist” approaches, we mostly just enjoyed the wines for what they were. The Sandrone was showing impressively right out of the gate, with deep and ripe flavors of dark cherry flavors and aromas of smoke, leather, dust, tar, and cherry showing at least some oak influence. I thought that the oak on the Sandrone was perhaps 80% integrated, and there certainly was no shortage of raw materials there to balance these effects out. The tannins that were present were sweet and fine, not drying. But next to the Giacosa, the wine showed a bit less clarity and precision than what one might hope for, but I strongly suspect that a couple of more years in the bottle will help considerably in this respect.

The 1998 Giacosa Falletto started a bit slow, having been opened just before dinner, but its ascent was as steep as some of the cliffs along the Crystal River. Aromas of tar, balsamico, and violets emerged with time in the glass, and the wine showed a remarkable transparency and weightlessness that not everyone will associate with Barolo. The precisely defined sour cherry flavors were infused with spice notes that added to the intensity of the wine on the mid-palate and carried through on the long finish. By two hours, the wine was drinking beautifully, the boundaries between the aromatic and the flavors on the palate nicely blurred by wine’s inner mouth perfume.