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Cantina del Glicine, Barbaresco “Vignesparse”

Piedmont, Italy 2015 (750mL)
Regular price$40.00
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Cantina del Glicine, Barbaresco “Vignesparse”

When you love Italian wine like I do, the abundance of excellent, affordable options can make you a little crazy. Never mind Italy’s unparalleled diversity of native grapes—Piedmontese Nebbiolo from the 2015 vintage could easily take up all my bandwidth on its own.


Today’s classically styled, micro-production Barbaresco from Cantina del Glicine is the latest ’15 from Piedmont to elbow its way to the front of the line and demand a place on my table. At a hair over $40, how could I possibly pass it by? How could anyone? One of the greatest red wine appellations in the world, a fantastic artisanal producer, and a seductively aromatic, multi-layered, more-generous-than-usual expression of young Nebbiolo—I’m counting off all the reasons on my fingers here. “Vignesparse” is sourced from vineyards in the village of Neive, one of the three anchor towns of the Barbaresco production zone, where Adriana Marzi and Roberto Bruno have hand-crafted a small range of wines since they founded Cantina del Glicine in 1980. This place is a jewel box, centered around a deep, vaulted wine cave that dates to the 16th century, and this wine is another gem to add to the growing list of un-missable ’15s from Piedmont. Want to be properly stocked with mind-expanding, still-improving Barbaresco with 10+ years still left in the tank? Grab a case of this!


Cantina del Glicine is named for the wisteria (glicine) that grows in the winery’s courtyard, underneath which is the centuries-old stone cellar where they still age their wines. The property had been in Roberto’s family before he and Adriana moved from Milan to take it over, with vineyard holdings that include parcels in two great Neive vineyards: “Currà,” and “Marcorino,” two acclaimed crus. In addition to bottling single-vineyard wines from these sites, they source from three other well-known Neive crus—”Serracapelli,” “Gallina” and “Serraboella”—for the Vignesparse bottling. As with all their wines, production is tiny: only about 7,500 bottles of Vignesparse are produced in a given vintage.



This remains a mom-and-pop operation through and through, with a resolutely traditional approach to viticulture and winemaking. Roberto and Adriana employ organic farming practices in the vineyards and age their Barbarescos in large, used Slavonian oak vats, keeping the oak influence on the wines minimal. In a vintage like ’15 especially, there’s a generous layer of dark cherry fruit in “Vignesparse,” complemented by the full Nebbiolo array of spices, flowers, and other earthly sensations. And, as a proper Barbaresco should, this is a wine that slowly, seductively unfolds in the glass, revealing new complexities each time you re-visit it.



In the glass, the 2015 Vignesparse is a deep garnet-red moving to pink and orange at the rim, with a heady aromatic mix of bing cherry, wild strawberry, cranberry, violets, black tea, tobacco, and underbrush. It’s a very silky, “Burgundian” expression of Barbaresco. It is medium to medium-plus in body, skewing toward the ripe end of the Barbaresco spectrum but nicely balanced by the more floral/savory notes. After 30-60 minutes open, its taut structure softens a bit to lend it a silkier feel on the palate, but it’s clear this wine still has more evolution ahead of it—10 years at least, I think, which isn’t going to stop me from uncorking another bottle A.S.A.P. Served in Burgundy stems, at 60-65 degrees, with a medium-rare steak or some lamb chops off the grill, this wine has my undivided attention right now—at least until the next one comes along! Enjoy!
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Italy

Northwestern Italy

Piedmont

Italy’s Piedmont region is really a wine “nation”unto itself, producing world-class renditions of every type of wine imaginable: red, white, sparkling, sweet...you name it! However, many wine lovers fixate on the region’s most famous appellations—Barolo and Barbaresco—and the inimitable native red that powers these wines:Nebbiolo.

Tuscany

Chianti

The area known as “Chianti” covers a major chunk of Central Tuscany, from Pisa to Florence to Siena to Arezzo—and beyond. Any wine with “Chianti” in its name is going to contain somewhere between 70% to 100% Sangiovese, and there are eight geographically specific sub-regions under the broader Chianti umbrella.

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