Dolcetto days are here again. It has been tough couple of years for Piedmont. While Nebbiolo is king, the everyday wines like Dolcetto and Barbera are the mainstays of the vintners as well as fantastic food choices for us Americani. The problem for both was back to back ‘stinker’ vintages. Yes, thanks to some late sunshine, the 2013 Nebbiolos have been juicy, complex and dazzling. Everybody is looking forward to the Barolos and Barbarescos. But the Dolcetto and Barbera, often planted in the lesser sections of some of the top vineyards, got hit with untimely rain and couldn’t hang on until the sun shined. As to 2014, it was all kinds of difficult across the board.
For those reasons, there simply hasn’t been very many choices for the category …that is until the 2015s started showing up. It’s a brand new day, with ripe, plump and engaging examples of both started to show up on supplier lists. The success of 2015 hit Piedmont as well, and the Dolcettos are no exception. We dare say that the turnabout seems even greater here than most other European regions. Whereas in Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhone were also pretty good in 2014, in this part of the world it was not. So the difference between the 2014s and 2015s borders on staggering, the salient point being we have some seriously good Dolcetto at hand now.
The Piemontese love Dolcetto for its outgoing fruit, food versatility, and attractive pricing (the Piemontese are notoriously frugal). You can even put a slight chill on it for service on warmer days, and it will play with virtually anything from a hearty Italian stew to a plate of salume. It’s one of Italy’s best ‘little’ reds, and we’re pleased to have not only good stuff to sell, but really engaging juice to drink thanks to 2015. To that end we have three fine, fresh examples from some of our favorite sources.
The story of Olek Bondonio is a little unusual. Olek, who has eastern European roots as well as Italian, visited the estate he currently operates in summer as a child. He then made his name as a competitive snowboarder before becoming a winemaker. His family has been involved here for some 200 years but Olek only started making wine here in 2005. His Barbaresco comes from the Roncagliette, perhaps better known by the name used by his neighbor, Sori Tildin. He is very ‘hands on’ when it comes to working the vineyard but he is all about letting the vineyard shine through.
The Olek Bondonio Dolcetto d’Alba 2015 reflects that attention to detail with a great purity to the fruit and inviting scents of blue fruits, violet, and a little almond skin. Sleek and polished, the expressive fruit of the vintage is perfectly punctuated by fresh acidity and the kind of lift that makes this an easy quaff. It’s what Dolcetto is all about, with the extra added attraction of coming from storied dirt. The vines are 30-50 years old, all is done with native yeasts and gravity flow, and it’s bottled unfiltered.
Andrea Bosco is the passionate young owner of Bosco Agosatino, named for his father and founded by his grandfather in 1904. Again here all of the juice is state grown, all within the confines of La Morra, and the surface area of the estate is around 10 acres. The hillside faces south west and it composed of clay and limestone, and 70% of the Dolcetto vines are over a half-century in age. The fermentation is controlled and done entirely in stainless steel to both preserve the gregarious fruit and prevent the extraction of unwanted tannins. As you may have expected, Andrea’s single-vineyard Agostino Bosco Dolcetto d’Alba Vantrin 2015 is something of a fruit bomb with effusive blackberry and mulberry character, a streak of minerality and earth, and just enough cleansing freshness to keep things on point.
Finally, it’s hard to talk about things like Dolcetto and Barbera without mentioning perennial all-star Luca Currado who seems to do everything well all the time. Granted the young vignerons above have established themselves as players but no one is more passionate than the folks at Vietti. While Luca’s Vietti Dolcetto d’Alba Tre Vigne 2015 isn’t necessarily as ‘aristocratic’ as Olek’s (serious dirt for Dolcetto) or as ‘big’ as Andrea’s, it is plump, engaging and very likely to disappear while whatever the discussion is continues. Friendly and harmonious.
It’s great to have Dolcetto back on the shelves, and this time around we have some great Dolcetto thanks to our network of proven producers and the gloriously decadent 2015 vintage.