During the Major League Baseball playoffs, one of the announcers calling a Cubs-Dodgers game described Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks’ style as “quiet.” It wasn’t just that Hendricks, soft-spoken and cerebral, had a “quiet” personality: the intent of the description was to describe his discreet, fluid throwing mechanics on the mound. He doesn’t have a big leg kick, or hurl himself headlong toward the plate, or otherwise betray any over-exertion – but he’s a killer, dominating other teams without needing to always overpower them.
This kind of “quiet” is an apt descriptor for Luigi Giordano’s 2012 Barbaresco from the famed Asili vineyard, one of the finest sites in the region. It’s a beautifully proportioned wine with all of its pieces in the right place, a subtle seducer driven by its high-pitched Nebbiolo aromatics. Part of this character comes from the 2012 vintage, which is known as a more ‘medium-weight’ year in comparison to, say, the more ‘full-throttle’ 2011 vintage. What we get from ’12 is wonderful Nebbiolo purity without the forbidding tannins, and in Giordano’s Asili, an exceedingly elegant Barbaresco, sneakily powerful and finishing with a flourish. That this kind of blue-chip grace and collectability comes for less than $50 is just amazing to us. We’re confident you’ll agree.
The Luigi Giordano winery, now in its fourth generation of family ownership, was founded in the 1930s and is headquartered right in the village of Barbaresco proper. The family’s vineyard holdings include pieces of the crus Cavanna, Ronchi, Montestefano and Asili, the latter one of the better-known vineyards in the entire Barbaresco zone. Asili’s orientation is south/south-west, and Giordano’s parcel – abutting the parcel farmed by the legendary Produttori del Barbaresco – sits in the southwest-facing section, an ‘afternoon’ exposure that enables more elegant, firm, finely tuned styles in comparison to southeast-facing (more fruit-forward, accessible) or full south-facing (intense, extracted) sites.
In terms of the ‘modern’ versus ‘traditional’ discussion that continues in Barolo and Barbaresco, Giordano falls into the traditional camp, aging the Asili for 18-24 months in large, 30- to 50-hectoliter Slavonian oak botte. During the initial fermentation the juice is macerated on its skins for 12-15 days, putting Giordano right in the meat of the curve, as it were (ultra-traditionalists go longer, therein extracting more tannin, whereas modernistas often opt for much shorter macerations, in an effort to preserve color, fruit, and more immediate accessibility).
I see the 2012 Asili from Giordano as a perfect choice for near-term aging: I think between five and ten years is going to be its sweet spot, which is not to say I wasn’t fascinated by it right out of the bottle, after about a half-hour in a decanter. It’s the kind of wine I would hope to get in a blind tasting exam, because it is a spot-on representation of Nebbiolo: your first hint is its medium-ruby color skewing ever-so-slightly brickish on the rim (typical color for even a young Nebbiolo), but the deal is sealed when you wade into that whirling tornado of Nebbiolo perfume, hinting at everything from dried cherry to bitter orange peel to leather and cedar, the effect almost head-snapping. On the palate the infamous Nebbiolo tannins are crunchy but not aggressive, the wine showing backbone but also an alluring silkiness, the flavors suggesting cherry kirsch, dewy roses, and cigar wrappers. Even at this young age, the wine has a deliciously long, aromatic finish. To pick up on our baseball analogy above, this wine throws a complete game!
Serve this elegant, heady red on the coolish side (I’d say about 60 degrees), in large Burgundy stems, and pair it with something that respects its power and savor but also its grace – one thing that leaps to mind is
a fragrant, woodsy rabbit ragù, which is a little more Ligurian than Piedmontese, but you’re not likely to get any complaints. And, perhaps most important, find some room in your cellar for at least a few bottles of this; it won’t make you wait forever for it to start singing, and its affordability makes it a no-brainer. Don’t miss it!
