I have almost no experience with their wines, but they were in the forefront of the modernist movement and, while they are exceptions, there are some modern-styled wines from that time that have cracked up. They generally were using very short maceration times, so extracted less from the grapes, then gave them a lot of time in barrique, which would slowly introduce some oxygen.
A friend gave me a bottle of '97 Pio Cesare a couple of years ago that I’ve hesitated to open. That sounds like a perfect storm of producer, height of the roto-fermenter/barrique era, plus a hot year with ripe grapes and problem fermentations at some wineries.
(An Italian friend ITB once described a Pio Cesare wine as “the end of Christian civilization as we know it.”)
I don’t think they’re nearly as extreme modern as you are fearing, but that’s just my personal opinion. Try it with an open mind, it might be good in its own way.
Agree with many prior responses in that it’s situational. One of the guys in my highly experienced tasting group is completely unable to detect TCA. Lucky guy!
I’ve a few 1997 Pio Cesare left from a 6 pack I got cheap in Italy. Got it at a restaurant wholesale shop for about $20/bottle. Last one I opened was a year ago. Not so bad and actually kinda pleasurable. Correct for a Barolo.
normally when I open one thats dead, I’m the first to admit it. but I hesitate to tell others because everyone’s tastes are different. one person’s “dead” is another persons “tertiary notes”
Dead is dead. I had a conversation about this with a winemaker once and we both laughed. Your friend didnt make the wine, he bought the wine. There is no reason for them to take it personally. It happens
Well, if he’s happily drinking it over dinner, he might not take kindly to someone telling him it’s DOA, because that’s saying, in effect, that he’s an ignorant fool.
“What do you think of this wine?” is what I ask when I’m in this situation. I listen, learn and more often than not, I find the other party(ties) all too willing to be open about the wine in question.
Was at a business dinner and the host had ordered some bottles of amarone for the table. After tasting I could tell the first bottle was not correct, just short of undrinkable. He was praising the wine so I was hesitant to speak up, and I felt he would notice if I refused to keep drinking. I quietly asked the server to open another bottle and bring a taste, then had him bring a glass to the host, and I said something like “if you think that first bottle was good, try a glass from this one, it’s night and day.” He immediately saw the difference and don’t think he took any offense.
I have not yet had the experience of having a friend proudly pour a wine that I thought was dead/flawed or simply ‘yucky.’
I did have a friend at my home for a party where I put out many different bottles of wine and unable to taste each one upon opening.
Later in the evening, my friend was extolling the flavors of a bottle of a young California Pinot Noir (Gap’s Crown) that was out and suggested I have a glass. The bottle was close to empty. The wine was corked; it was not obvious but definitely showed the signs of must/wet basement. I did tell him that I thought it was corked. He said “I don’t care. I like it.”
I suppose that if I was in a friend’s home and they were pouring a prized wine, I might not be as direct and candid unless it was a good, close friend in which case the verbal jousting and repartee would be appropriate and perhaps expected.
I once had to tell a friend that the magnum of 1945 Latour with perfect provenance that he’d gone through extraordinary effort and expense to share at a special dinner was corked. I don’t think the corked magnums of 1982 Mouton and either 1966 or 1970 Latour earlier that night that other people brought lessened his pain.
When we were first getting into wine, a friend and I drank a bottle of 1970 Canon La Gaffeliere we’d BYO’d to a good local place. The bottle felt tired to us, but we enjoyed it nevertheless. Afterwards the somm finally got around to trying the glass we’d sent him…and told us it was corked!
We laughed over that one! I’m not super TCA sensitive, all I was able detect that it seemed tired/underfruited etc, but I assumed that it was simply age, and C la Gaff not being awesome back then.
Definitely a touchy situation, and I think most of the time, one should just keep quiet.
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