Over the years, I’ve greeted each new release of Ronchi Barbaresco with a sense of inevitability. This wine is a perennial performer, one that instantly becomes the best pound-for-pound value on any wine list I could hope to write, and I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase it sight-unseen. (I think all sommeliers have a few wines they’d be comfortable saying such a thing about, but I’d emphasize the word “few.”)
And while I probably didn’t need to taste Ronchi’s 2015 Barbaresco—given all the deserved hype surrounding this vintage—I gladly and greedily did so, which only reinforced the wine’s status as a monumental value and a pitch-perfect expression of place. Yes, it was inevitable, but I’ll offer confirmation nonetheless: This is everything one could ask for in classically styled, artisan-made Barbaresco, at a price point that has all but disappeared from the category. Anyone building a cellar on a more modest budget (a group that includes me) should add a healthy supply of this ’15 to the mix and feel confident that, for the price of some flash-in-the-pan supermarket red with a cute label and no backstory, they’re getting an authentic classic that’ll evolve and enthrall over the next 20 years. This wine was already consistently great—the 2015 vintage simply amplifies its greatness!
The Ronchi property is based in the village of Barbaresco proper, with the family house perched atop the cru vineyard of the same name (for the Italian wine geeks out there, the Ronchi vineyard is bordered by “Montestefano” to the north and “Moccagatta” to the south). This amphitheater-shaped site, in which the vines average 30-40 years of age, has a southeastern aspect and runs up to the border with the village of Neive to the east. The Rocca family has been in this spot for four generations, and today winemaker Giancarlo Rocca presides over about 7 hectares (16 acres). Working without any pesticides or herbicides, Rocca is also a traditionalist in the cellar, aging his wines only in the large, Slavonian oak vats known as botti and bottling his wines unfined and unfiltered.
Given the minimum aging requirements for Barbaresco (26 months in total before release), this is one of the first 2015s we’ve tasted, as they only started arriving in our market recently. As with so many ’15s, this one is impressively ripe and bold, but not to the point of being overblown or atypical. All the classic Barbaresco touchstones are there—the complex aromas; the firm tannins; the lifted acidity—but there’s a clarity and completeness to the wine, even at this young age, that speaks to the vintage. A lot of ’15s are noteworthy (and, in some cases, not as appealing) because they have the volume turned way up; this one’s more about the quality of the sound—a familiar, beautiful piece of music played through a better set of speakers.
In the glass, Ronchi’s 2015 is a deep, luminous garnet-red with crimson and pink reflections, with textbook Barbaresco aromas of black cherry, red currant, rose petal, licorice, sandalwood, leather, and underbrush. It is medium-plus in body, with ripe but firm tannins that frame the fruit and lend that inimitable Barbaresco/Barolo backbone. This is a bold, muscular Barbaresco with lots of great drinking ahead of it, though with about an hour in a decanter it is mighty good right now: Serve it at 60-65 degrees in Burgundy stems with something with a little fat and smoke to it (the attached recipe should do the trick) and, while it isn’t likely, an unfinished bottle will be even better on day two. Be sure to hang onto some stock for enjoyment 10-15 years down the line as well. It will definitely get there, which, at this price, is no small achievement. Enjoy!
