Avid fans of great reds like Barolo and Burgundy know that it’s a grave mistake to generalize about vintages. Sure, I look at vintage charts, and I’m more inclined to take a flyer on an unfamiliar wine in more widely acclaimed years—but to write off so-called “difficult” or “bad” vintages in their entirety is to miss out on exquisite classics like Brovia’s 2014 “Unio.”
Truly great producers—and truly great vineyards—so often snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and prior to tasting this wine, my default example of this was the magnificent 2002 “Monfortino” from the Giacomo Conterno estate. Many producers produced no Barolo at all in the hail-damaged 2002 vintage, but not only was Conterno’s vineyard spared, the quality of the fruit was so good they decided to make a
riserva wine usually produced in only the “best” vintages. The Brovia experience in ’14 was a little different, but the result was the same: A wine that completely transcended expectations for the vintage and won raves from all the top critics in the process. As we learned upon encountering today’s unfamiliar label, Brovia’s “Unio” is a real triumph—the product of skillful triage and tough choices. It is the only Barolo the winery produced in 2014, after culling only the best fruit from its many Grand Cru-equivalent vineyards and selling off the rest in bulk. An exhaustive series of blending sessions followed to select only the ‘best-of-the-best’ lots. Great producer, great wine—it’s not always so simple, but it’s true!
[NOTE: This wine is only available as a pre-offer and will be arriving at our warehouse in two weeks.]
And as Barolo lovers are well-aware, Brovia ranks among the elite estates in the region, having continuously produced wine for more than 150 years. The family’s pride is a small collection of top vineyard sites, all of them organically farmed and most located in the village of Castiglione Falletto: Perhaps the best-known is “Villero,” a southwest-facing cru known for powerful, brooding wines, but there’s also the well-known “Rocche” and “Garblèt Sué” (a.k.a. “Bricco Fiasco”) sites. In the village of Serralunga, the Brovias farm a piece of the “Brea” vineyard, and the family bottles their four individual crus separately and releases them as the estate’s premium-priced, top wines. What many people don’t realize is that their flagship Barolo normale (not a great way to characterize a wine that is far from “normal”) is usually a blend of younger-vine fruit from all those acclaimed sites.
In 2014, things were not exactly normale, and at this point I’ve got to cede the floor to Clarke Boehling of Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Brovia’s longtime importer. He likens 2014 in Piedmont to a “15-round boxing match,” during which Mother Nature unleashed “three separate vicious hailstorms in rapid succession,” among other punishing blows. But fourth-generation proprietors Cristina and Elena Brovia, along with Elena’s husband, Alex Sanchez, not only went the distance but managed to put something special in the bottle. Says Boehling:
“As arduous as the growing season was, the post-harvest rounds were equally exhausting, with Alex and the sisters executing multiple double-blind evaluations of over 30 different blends of their holdings. In the end, they used the lower sector of “Brea” in Serralunga d’Alba—containing the best-exposed and oldest vines—plus portions from two other crus in Castiglione Falletto, the details of which they refused to reveal. As curious as we are to know, we respect their decision to try and avoid the perception that the crus they included are necessarily superior (rather than simply being better-suited to this particular blend). They christened the result of this difficult birth “Unio,” a Latin word meaning “union” and referring to the marriage of crus that constitute the blend. 50% of their total Barolo harvest ended up being sold off in bulk.”
Well, there you have it—and I’m here to tell you that the 2014 “Unio” rewarded their efforts handsomely. That’s a word I’d use to describe it, in fact—“handsome”—along with elegant, hauntingly aromatic, and deeply affecting. This is a fine-tuned style of Barolo that will put on weight as it ages, and considering the vintage, the tannins are amazingly refined. In the glass, it’s a medium garnet-red moving to pink and a hint of orange at the rim, with mesmerizing aromas of red and black cherry, red currant, rose petals, white pepper, red tobacco leaf, sandalwood, oiled leather, and anise. It has a taut, upright structure at this moment, so decant it at least an hour before serving if you’re pulling a cork on one now; otherwise, expect an ever-deepening, ever-more-complex evolution over the next 10-15 years. Serve it in Burgundy stems at 60 degrees and put its sinewy musculature to work with a fatty cut of beef or lamb. This is Barolo at its classically styled best—don’t miss it!
