Wine: Giacomo Conterno Barolo Cascina Francia Vintage: 2017 Region: Serralunga d'Alba, Piedmont, Italy Grape: Nebbiolo 100% Alcohol: 14.5% Tasted: February 2024, decanted 3 hours
First Impressions
The colour alone stops you. Garnet with a faint brick rim — Nebbiolo always tells its age at the edges — and perfectly clear. In the glass it looks almost delicate, which is the first of several lies it tells you before you actually drink it.
Nose
This wine smells like the memory of a rose garden next to a tar road at the edge of a forest. I know that sounds like something a pretentious person would say, but I've been sitting here for twenty minutes trying to think of a more honest description and I can't find one.
More specifically: dried roses (classic Nebbiolo), tar (classic Nebbiolo), red cherry, dried orange peel, leather, a whiff of cinnamon, and underneath it all something earthy and truffle-adjacent that makes you want to drink it immediately and also save it forever.
Palate
The tannins are — as you'd expect from Conterno and from Serralunga — substantial. But "substantial" is doing a lot of diplomatic work here. They are firm and drying and grip the entire inside of your mouth, and they are also, paradoxically, completely integrated. The wine is big without being overwhelming, structured without being austere.
Acidity is excellent. The fruit — red cherry, pomegranate, dried plum — is precise rather than lush. The finish is very long. I timed it at roughly forty seconds, which felt like cheating somehow.
Verdict
95/100
The 2017 vintage in Piedmont was hot, which made many people nervous about Barolo. Conterno apparently worried about nothing. This is a complete, complex, age-worthy bottle that also happens to be deeply pleasurable to drink right now, with enough decanting time.
Buy it if you can find it and afford it. Lay most of it down. Drink one bottle immediately with something braised, and think about why you got into wine in the first place.
A note on scores: I use a 100-point scale loosely. 95 means "significant, memorable, worth seeking out." It does not mean "perfect." Nothing is perfect.