I am a firm believer that old nebbiolo should be opened and perhaps decanted quite early in the day if you are serving in the evening. Conversely, I believe young nebbiolo should not be decanted at all, as it tends to shut down with air in my experience. For purposes of this discussion, let’s take that as the premise – we can talk about whether I’m wrong to begin with another time.
My question is this: what’s the cutoff? Where does it shift from being old to young? Clearly this is a general question, and the answer will vary by vineyard, vintage, producer etc. Of course, if I know the wine well, I have a good idea how it’s showing and can make an informed decision. But if I don’t the wine, or haven’t had it in a long time? What constitutes old and young at this point?
For me, bottles from the 70’s and older fall firmly in the old category, and always get opened early. Bottles from the 90’s and younger are young, and are largely decanted right before serving and allowed to develop in the glass. So the cutoff is somewhere in the 80’s, more or less. It might be around ’85. I tend to err on the side of opening too late rather than too early since you can always give it more time, but you can never turn back the clock.
If you are also a believer in this nebbiolo magic, what’s your cutoff date?
I’m right there with you on decant strategy overall, but was really intrigued to see that you cutoff waaay later than I do. I consider “young” pop and pour Nebbiolo to be about 15 years or less, again, these being the ones that shut down with air. I tend to do the 12 hour decant on wines approx 2000 and older. Caveat is that I open very little 5-15 year old Nebbiolo to to begin with as I generally don’t like that phase.
Occasionally when I’ve encountered situations where I find a borderline-aged wine is doing the “shutdown in the decanter” thing, I find aggressive movement of the wine, swirling in the decanter/glass, etc sometimes helps.
I’d also add that another voodoo thing I do is that when I slow decant older bottles (i.e. >30 yrs+), I slow decant them at cellar temp. With younger wines I’ll do room temp slow decant. Again, completely voodoo, but my remnant knowledge in molecular biology leads me to think that the ~20deg F difference will noticeably increase the rate of oxidation and make the wines show better. YMMV.
That sounds about right except that I think the extreme decants are unnecessary and a bit over the top, a few hours is generally enough (but if I’m drinking nebbiolo with Jamie it’s whatever he wants to do).
I have a 1989 Brovia Rocche that I’m planning on drinking soon but I don’t have a great idea how to treat it as it is a tweener.
Also, I’ve been enjoying just popping bottles from 2009, 2011 and 2012.
Wow, that is indeed much younger than I would do an extended decant. Thinking about it, though, it’s just the decade of the 90’s where we differ. I consider the 80’s my grey area in this regard - yesterday I did the slow ox for a few hours on two '82s, but not an '89. Anyway, as to the 90’s most of my wine from that decade is from '96, which is particularly structured. I’ve had a ton of '96s shut down on me, so with a few exceptions I treat them as young.
I also don’t open much that’s younger than 15 years unless I know the wine, or I’m deliberately evaluating a young wine. In that latter case, I always pop and pour. Anything else defeats the point of doing an evaluation, in my book.
I have a '58 Conterno Barbaresco Riserva and a '61 Conterno Barolo on deck for tonight with roast goat. I’m opening them now, and will try your cellar temp thing.
I actually thought you were going to be asking “when do you stop buying newly released Barolo/barbaresco?”.
I’m actually more in Izzy’s camp, and would have said 10-15 years. But I actually rarely drink anything younger than 10-15 years if age, and have to admit (perhaps because of this) that it’s unusual that I experience the shut down with air phenomenon. almost all of my 2004’s are untouched, working on 2001 and older.
I too at first this was about buying rather than drinking!
I really like Barolo but am still feeling my way on this issue. I tend to like to follow a wine over time – as much for education, as well as Sarah’s point about not missing out on the perfect drinking window. I too have a good deal of 1996, and am mostly letting those rest. I do find that the first year or two can be enjoyable, but then I need to wait a good ten or more years.
I find Barolo (perhaps Nebbiolo generally, I have less experience with Barbaresco) quite confounding in how a wine that feels over the hill at first can open and feel more youthful hours later. I fear that in my early days I may have poured down the drain a great wine that appeared over the hill when I first opened it.
This raises a related question (apologies in advance for veering slightly from the OP). There is this general rule of thumb that if you decant and give a young wine time over an evening, you will approximate aging. Barolo seems to me to be a strong counter to that, which makes me wonder if it is a strong counter for other/all wines. I have definitely had some older (2-3 decades) Bdx blends (mostly domestic) that at first seem tired but then open up with time. There are of course others that are dead on opening, and stay that way. But do we (I certainly admit to thinking this often) err in thinking that opening, decanting, swirling a young wine gives us a strong approximation of what age will do?
‘Strong approximation’ is the question, and I think the answer is no. For very young and tannic nebbs, I’ve found that decanting for 2 or 3, even 4 days can soften the wine enough so you can taste the fruit behind the tannin wall. But the rest of aging transformation doesn’t happen at least in my experience.
I never actually decant old nebbiolo, I find that opening it and doing a slow-ox tends to work best. I don’t know if you need to slow-ox a full 12 hours before starting to drink though…I’ve had pretty good luck opening about 8 hours before I plan to start drinking and then following the wine for a few hours so the last glass will have had 11-12 hours of air. I’ve been amazed many times at the dramatic recovery in wines that seemed lifeless and tired upon opening. I usually only do this with pre-90s wines.
Actually, Sarah, when you say “opened and perhaps decanted” can you clarify what you actually do? (to me there’s quite a bit of difference between slow oxing and decanting in terms of elapsed time, and then I’m always interested in what people are doing when they decant a few hours ahead–are they decanting and leaving a decanter in the cellar, or on the counter reaching room temp, or are they double decanting and leaving in the bottle for a few hours.) I realize you don’t likely want this to become yet another decanting discussion, but what is it you actually do when you open an older Barolo in the AM?
I’ve almost never opened bottles in the morning for evening service. Noon is the about the earliest I’d open for dinner.
By “opened and perhaps decanted” I mean I will open the bottles, take a tiny taste, and decide based on how they are showing whether I leave them sitting open in the cellar, put the corks back in part way, decant immediately, or decant a couple of hours before service. Or something in between. I usually leave the bottles or decanters in the cellar during that period, or at least try and keep them slightly cool when the wine is delicate, especially if I’m serving to a group where pours will be small (warms up in glass faster). So it really varies by how the wine is doing. The sticky point there, though, is that I always find the tiny taste unpleasant, so it’s hard to evaluate.
Yesterday, I opened a '58 Conterno Barbaresco and a '61 Conterno Barolo. The bottles had been standing for weeks, and all sediment was firmly caked at the bottom. I pulled both corks around noon. The '58 showed a lot of madeirization and the '61 a lot of VA and was much more delicate. Both had good body, though, and didn’t seem too tight. I left them in the cellar uncorked until about 5 PM, just before guests arrive. I tasted both again and found the progression positive - both madeirization and VA were improving. I decided to decant both at that point, planning to serve them with our second course at ~7. I washed both bottles in case I wanted them later.
The evening ended up going a little slowly, and at maybe 6:30, one guest and I went down to cellar and checked on the wines. Both were tasting very good, cleaning up and putting on weight. If I had been worried about them then, I might have gone back into the bottles and stoppered them then, but everything was fine.
At close to 8, we brought the decanters up and served the wine to 10 guests, so quite small pours. The '58 was much more classically proportioned, with good depth and only a tiny hint of the madeirized notes it had originally. The '61 was really interesting, extremely floral and had put on a lot of weight since opening. Both were beautiful wines, interesting and delicious, and continued to improve noticeably in the glass, even over the short period of consumption. The group was split over which they preferred, and everyone agreed they were a great match with grilled maitake mushrooms with Castelmagno cheese fonduta.
Looking back, I’m very happy with the approach. I don’t think a little variation one way or the other would have made all that much difference in our enjoyment. I have no way of knowing if something different would have been better, but there was nothing wrong with what we did.
i decant all older nebs late morning for dinner that night. i’ve found that the first few hours are brown and tawny and by dinner it totally changes. i have zero idea why or how this works but it does. jamie wolff of chambers street wines told me this years ago and i’ve had consistent results. my takeaway is that a few hours might not be enough time and i’ve never had the situation where they fall apart because of this. i also generally have a strong preference for a wine being ready when poured as opposed to opening in the glass. now, granted, this is limited to wines from the late 60s at the oldest and mostly 70s into early 80s. and i decant all young wines as well, but that’s closer to service and those tend to be lesser nebs as opposed to high end baroli which i generally just leave alone.
Yes, Sarah, I know we’ve hijacked your thread, but the information on how experienced folks handle their wines I think is useful for all. My own take for older wines, particularly Barolo, but also rioja, Burgundy, Bordeaux, northern rhone, and Washington reds is that folks don’t give them enough air. there seems to be this fear that they will “fade”, but the bigger danger is that they are just not given a chance to wake up and open up. Those who say that they “never decant” a whatever wine can stick to that and follow a wine as it evolves over 6-8 hours, but I personally don’t have the free time or patience to do that. (I do realize that there are wines that will reach a very enjoyable level within an hour of opening, and I’m not really referring to these here. If you try to do this with an older Barolo, you will generally flunk).
Not that I see lovely older bottles like that all that often, but I echo Rich’s huzzah, Sarah–really appreciate you giving us all that detail.
Only recent reference is a 2000 which we had on day 1, was pretty tight, left about half open in bottle and next day was singing beautifully (granted, I might be reading from a heretical textbook ).
"2000 E Pira e Figli Barolo Via Nuova Chiara Boschis
Tomato leaf, sour strawberry and raspberry, this has a great deal of life on the tongue, with fine length and promise of much in the future. That promise is realized the next day, when some tar and darker earth notes—and perhaps even some barnyard—show up. On the palate, this has really gotten to textbook Barolo—berries take the lead but florals, earth and a small bit of eucalypt, actually. Very fine wine here."
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).