The More Things Change … Absolutely Crazy Value on a Langhe Nebbiolo
Posted on: 10/26/18 12:01 PM
Its fruit, paired with Michele’s new way of working in the cellar, yields a wine that matches balance and flavor intensity with freshness and length, one that will be every bit as elegant and multi-faceted as the foods with which you serve it. One which will keep whispering, “Barolo,” even while you’re reading Nebbiolo on its label.
Powerful flavors (when it comes to Nebbiolo transparent color does NOT indicate light flavors), in a distinguished, powerfully satisfying register, all the flavor detail you could ask for, even at a MUCH higher price . . . and there’s no reason on earth it won’t get better for at least the next 3-5 years.
2015 Reverdito Langhe Nebbiolo “Simane”
More about the Wine:
I began working with Sabina and Michele Reverdito in 2008, when they were selling their 2006 Nebbiolo “Simane,” which was darkly colored with sweet late harvest notes and mouth-coating viscosity.
It was EXCELLENT.
EVERYBODY loved it.
Their current vintage is 2015. Its color is transparently tawny. It’s as dry as a bone. And it doesn’t so much coat the mouth as bathe it in refinement.
And it is EXCELLENT, too.
YOU will love it.
Three or four years ago Michele had a “road to Damascus” moment. He’d just built a new, larger cellar to accommodate the hundreds of barriques he’d accumulated for aging his wines “in the modern way” . . . and he decided he didn’t want to make wines like that anymore.
He wanted to make wines the way the old guys made them, lighter, more complex wines that proudly announced themselves as Piemontese in their lighter color, their more refined aromas, and in finely detailed flavors that evolved not just over time but in the course of a single glass.
So he sold the (225 liters) barriques and replaced them with 4,000 and 5,000 liter botti grandi.
But he kept farming the way he always had, with meticulous attention to each vine, without chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides, and with low yields, hand-harvested and quickly delivered to the winery in small boxes to protect the integrity of each grape.
And he kept farming WHERE he always had: the Simane vineyard in La Morra, where this wine is grown, is 270 meters above sea level (which gives it cool, acid-preserving nights) and has marne (limestone infused clay) soils over limestone bedrock (limestone also promotes liveliness in wine). It faces west, but otherwise it’s a lot like a Grand Cru Burgundy vineyard.
Its fruit, paired with Michele’s new way of working in the cellar, yields a wine that matches balance and flavor intensity with freshness and length, one that will be every bit as elegant and multi-faceted as the foods with which you serve it. One which will keep whispering, “Barolo,” even while you’re reading Nebbiolo on its label.
The 2015 Simane Nebbiolo is, in fact, a jewel: a precisely cut and polished, beautifully pure expression of Barolo flavors.
A little review here: the Simane vineyard is in the Barolo DOCG, but because Michele’s father only paid the fee to plant “Nebbiolo d’Alba [a DOC that was renamed Langhe Nebbiolo several years ago] the wine has to be sold as Nebbiolo instead of Barolo until and unless the vineyard is replanted and the higher fee for Barolo is paid.
Because of that little bit of history, the Simane has been one of the best values in Piemontese Nebbiolo for years, but now it adds a vast new measure of authenticity and character, along with the key to that EXACT spot on your dopamine pleasure circuit that can usually only be reached by Barolos and Barbarescos.
Powerful flavors (when it comes to Nebbiolo transparent color does NOT indicate light flavors), in a distinguished, powerfully satisfying register, all the flavor detail you could ask for, even at a MUCH higher price . . . and there’s no reason on earth it won’t get better for at least the next 3-5 years.
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